Shit

My friend just told me that I do not need 12g of yarn. I need 13.787987897890780978097078907 or something. Which is 14g.
Any ideas for some help? I really don’t want to buy another skein of yarn. Please somebody! As I just said in my email to Gwen, I need help, and in more ways that one.

Update on concerns

It’s going to be very very close. I just weighed the skein of Jaggerspun again. Last time it was about 19g. Now it is 13g. Based on my ‘so clever I’m stupid’ maths (which, I would like to add, I had to look up on here to be able to do my calculations), I need 12g of yarn to finish.
I may make this by the skin of my teeth. Pray that I have enough yarn.
In other news, I watched the last few episodes of Desperate Housewives season 2 (I’m waay waaaaay behind), and spotted Bree’s sweater in the last couple of episodes. Anyone who has watched this will know which one. Again I’m probably way behind on this one, seeing as I only fleetingly glance at Craftster at the moment, but in case I’m not alone, it’s the green one with all the cables and lace. A lovely jacket with wide ribbing on the front and a belt, and fantastic pockets (yeah I know, pockets are pockets, but these? Read on) where the ribbing lines up with the cabling on the front. So after watching the finale and finishing the central section of the wrap, and getting all giddy and frustrated, then remembering that DB has already downloaded the season 3 episodes I’ve missed, rewound and paused and still advanced lots and lots, and within 10 mins had a basic drawing of the knitting on the back, and idea of the sleeve construction, and a very vague view of how the front works. Now all I need is some cheap aran or dk (I’m not sure which, but I’m guessing dk right now for the sake of fitting on all the pattern. Maybe, if I ever finish anything ever, this could be a major PS2.0 work…

Concerns

I apologise for the absence. I’ve been knitting like a fiend when I haven’t been working, to try and get this shawl finished for the wedding, along with the gifty things. Plus, DB had to take the work laptop back to work for someone else to use it (the first person to ask for it in over a year, hence it was visiting us), so we are now sharing, and I have to say he gets priority seeing as he paid for it. The weather is still too cold for me to sit and blog upstairs on my PC, so I’ve taken advantage of the time away from surfing/purchasing etc (although a purchase has been made from Blue Moon Fibers for another gift for someone, so naturally I had to buy extra to justify postage). Good thing too. It is two weeks to Sue’s wedding and I haven’t finished the straight section of Sarcelle yet (all other projects have taken a major backseat, including said gifts till I know I’m almost home with it). And I have issues. Not with the pattern, I would like to stress. I’m so used to it I don’t need the printout anymore. And the yarn is just delicious to knit with. Doesn’t seem to get fuzzy while I knit or anything, and the silk element makes it look like it will block up a treat, the definition is wonderful when I stretch it out a little. And it is so warm too!
But I have yardage issues at the moment. I haven’t yet reached half way through the pattern and I have about 19g leftover (from 2 ounces, which is about 56-7g). Clearly this will not be a 60″ Sarcelle. But now I have to work out how much I can knit. If I’ve already used up 37g, I have no idea how much I will need for the last sections. My theory is, if I do a pattern repeat and weigh the yarn again, and divide the difference in g by the number of pattern steps in that repeat to get x, I can work out how much the last sections will need by multiplying x by the number of pattern steps over the last sections. Does that make sense? So say I use 3g for 10 pattern steps, and I have 6 steps to do in the last sections, I know I will need just under 2g to complete the wrap. I’m so glad I chose 3 for my example sum πŸ˜€ My maths before this has involved stressing a great deal because it appears that I used about 20g for the initial part, which is just rubbish when that part is smaller than the middle section I’ve just spent a week and a bit working on… I did A-level maths you know. But that was a long long time ago and I was also predicted an A but got a D. My maths involves flashes of great brilliance and dreaming the answer in my sleep and it working, but not being able to work out how I did it again once I write my working out down beautifully correct. Like when my friends say ‘but what about this bit, shouldn’t it be this answer instead’, thus wrecking my calculations, and my tutor saying ‘no, she’s correct’, and then me not understanding a) why it isn’t what my friends said, and b) my tutor’s explanation as to why I was right in the first place.
Did I ever tell you that, just like in the Simpsons where the men all develop great stupidity, the women in my family all degenerate into mad people and completely random unthinking beasts? I was so intelligent once. Now I can’t even remember to switch the oven on when I put the mains on and start the extractor fan. Or switch the bugger off when I’ve finished cooking… And so the degeneration begins.
This lace could be the last thing I ever calculate even half accurately. Although please do put me out of my misery if you think I can work this out in an easier way or that my pitiful maths above is horribly wrong! Being wrong is much worse than ending up with a too short wrap or not enough yarn and no lifeline πŸ˜‰
What else? Oh yeah, last weekend we had a ton of snow that all melted, so the light was once again really crappy. I hope I can have some pics of pretty things up for you tomorrow. I have a couple of extra things to show you. And while knitting I’ve been thinking about where to start next week for Project Spectrum. I’m hoping I’ll finish the wrap next week anyway, which leaves room for me to work on the gifts and my long, long, hanging around projects. Plus I hope to get some inspiration and styling from nature and the colour schemes for each couple of months. It should be a lot of fun πŸ™‚

A little more eye candy…

Ok, so I have lots more pics today πŸ˜€ I figured it was about time I showed you some of the things I got for Christmas, and a couple of projects I’m working on too. If I show you them, I have to finish them. Do you see?
Ok, so the Christmas pressie things are the knitting things I’ve already told you about – the Namaste Jetsetter bag, and the yarn swift. Here’s the bag.
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I don’t think you get quite a full idea of the size of the bag from this photo, but it is big. When I came home to find the box on the couch, the box was the same size as the couch cushion. The bag is a little smaller than an armchair ;D but I can say that right now it is sat on the armchair and is almost as wide as the seat. To give you a bit more of the scale and capacity of the bag, here’s another pic:
namastebagopen.jpg
Inside there is a copy of Last Minute Knitted gifts, the knitting so far on the Hourglass sweater (about 8.5 inches in the second to largest size, the worlds biggest purse (you can’t see it, but it is in the zipped pocket), my mobile, acidophelus capsules and other equally embarrassing emergency tummy kit items, plus my Harvey Nicks mints (they have a mirror in the case! Yay!), and you can see there is room for more. I would like to point out that the strap isn’t long enough to go over the book, but it gives you an idea of how big the inside is.
I love my bag. I’m hoping that I don’t experience some of the problems other owners have had with handles coming off, and I know that scratches and colour scrapes are kind of inevitable from the many, many, MANY other bags I’ve purchased in the past. Nothing a bit of cleaner and a felt pen wouldn’t fix πŸ˜‰ But I really do love everything about this bag – the handles are the right length to carry in the hand or on the shoulder, the clasp is magnetic, the pockets inside are numerous (3 stitched inside pockets on each half of the back – one side elasticated, one side plain – I use the elasticated for my phone and knitting bits, and the plain for my work ID card and keys and stuff like that), the zipped pocket in the centre doesn’t seem to catch on the knitting or yarn I carry, and I’ve had plenty of compliments on it. Yum.
Next up, the swift.
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This is, quite simply, the best thing I have ever bought. I don’t know how I managed without one before now. Before purchasing, on a good day I might wind a heavier yarn in about 30-40mins. Lighter ones I’d need an hour for. This one wound a dk skein of 300m in 10 mins (with ballwinder obviously!) πŸ˜€ Someone tell me why I didn’t buy one sooner?! Woot! I am soooo happy I invested in this now πŸ˜€ No more skeins falling off the back of a chair and tangling. No more farting about for hours and losing valuable knitting time. Yay!
And next to it? That is my new wedding shawl attempt. PotW was coming out a little too slim for my liking for a wrap, and given that I couldn’t guarentee how it would work out after blocking, I’ve set it aside, and started a new wrap that I think will work out really well.
sarcelleincreases.jpg
This is Sarcelle from Knitters Anonymous, as if you didn’t know. It doesn’t look very big right now, but I just have one set of increases left before the main body of the wrap, and the edges are about 8 inches long right now, so it is moving quite fast now I’ve learnt the pattern more. I’ve got 4 weeks to make this and block it, so if the increases are finished by the end of today, that means getting about 1/3 of the way through the wrap by the end of the week… Keep in mind that I’ve only really worked on this properly about 3 days this week or something, with no knitting at lunchtime at all, so I might be able to do it. And the pattern is really flexible on length, so if I get to the week before the wedding and haven’t quite done what the pattern wants, I can just start the decreases early. And decreases always seem quicker than increases, because you know you are nearly done. The yarn is Jaggerspun Zephyr in Elderberry, and is more purple than in the pic, which seems to think it is blue… The yarn so far is lovely and soft and buttery, but occassionally splitty, although that’s probably down to me using Addis. For this project though, Addis are fine – it isn’t complicated or hard, and it is almost, *almost* tv knitting. If the tv you are watching isn’t something you have to look at or focus on all the time (e.g. Friends) you can easily work on this. Don’t go watching any foreign language subtitled films and start complaining to me though.
Lastly, a photo I found on the camera which I thought I’d put up for the sake of it πŸ˜€
Remember I said I’d gone to Coldspring with DB’s mum on the way back from theirs over Christmas? I think I said that anyway… I made one purchase, in spite of craving a large quantity of sock yarn, handspun hand dyed chunky yarns, Debbie Bliss discounted stuff and gorgeous 100% wool chunky stuff that still smelt like it had just come off the back of a sheep. DB’s mum bought some gorgeous gorgeous stuff, much of it for charity knitting for hats and jumpers and stuff. I knew that if I did that, my bank would hate me, and my stash would shout at me and ask why I didn’t just use it up instead and send nice things off to charity (thanks to Dee at Posh Yarn, I’ve found a pattern that makes fingerless gloves with only 35g of sock yarn, which could be good for the homeless or to send to Romania in the shoebox schemes – if I have enough I can make full gloves! If not, great. Still looking for somewhere locally that wants preemie stuff though…). But I did buy some yarn to help me stashbust. Ages and ages ago I bought some Elsebeth Lavold Chunky Alpaca in a lovely mid green. Then I realised that 10 balls doesn’t really make a jumper, so I ummd and ahhhd about whether to do a sleeveless tank or something. When we went over the holidays, I found some more of the same yarn in an earthy brown, and the brain started to function and everything. I bought it (half the full price may I add), and cast on almost straight away for a stripey chunky ala Sesame. Suddenly I feel like I’ve said all this before. What the hell πŸ˜€ But anyway, I have a front and a back done, and they only took about 3 days to knit. It could have been finished by now, but I have other things to worry about. And I have no idea what buttons to get to use on it…
elsebethlavoldchunkyalpacastripey.jpg
Doesn’t look too exciting right now, but the yarn, while hairy, is warm and soft and it will make a good comfy lazy cardi. Yeah, I know stripes and chunky yarn might not be the best thing for a gal of my kind, but I don’t care, so yah boo sucks to you. There will be quite a lot left over – enough for a smaller stripey jumper, which might be good for the bride to be, Sue to play with. I’ve already suggested that to her, and if she wants it, I’ll suggest a swap or something. Either that or I’ll make something for someone else as a gifty thing.
Oh, and the knitting for x hours on x projects is working. I’ve done the thumb on the gloves, which surely wouldn’t have happened otherwise. They could be finished by the end of the week. Which means I’ll actually have to start those chunky green socks for the guy at work too :S I’ll be glad to get this monkey of my back though.
More updates next weekend probably, seeing as the weather – gales, rain hammering down etc – means that the light is still as bad as it was at the shortest day :/ But at least it feels like winter. Apparently we’ve had nights as warm as in July this winter. I’d like whoever said that to come and stay here and spend the night in the garden and say that again… It has been warmer sometimes thanks to a lot of cloud cover, but this is no July, and there has been sleet and snow which never settled thanks to the rain. Oh, and if you are cold in your area, make a Clapotis – it has been my saving grace in the wind and the rain this year. Hoorah!

“‘Roger O. Thornhill’ – what does the ‘O’ stand for?”

So asks the sultry and heavily flirting Eva Marie Saint of Cary Grant’s wrong man on the run from both the police and the criminals, in the wonderful North by Northwest (nothing quite like a bit of Hitch and some of the amazine Bernard Hermann score for a Sunday afternoon). Roger’s equally flirting reply? “Nothing”. If only this were true in my case.
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Here we have a remarkable fast moving piece of lace in cobweb weight cashmere from Posh Yarns (the red yarn I’ve used for provisional cast on, just to put it into perspective, is the Jitterbug yarn). I’ve even got to the point where, in spite of still needing the chart, I can successfully knit a row with only a quick glance at the pattern, and as I said the other day, cobweb weight yarn isn’t too hard to work with in itself, even if everything else tries to scupper my attempts to get this done asap so it will be blocked for the wedding. But, wait! What is this?!
printothewavemistake.jpg
That little ‘o’ is wrong. That is where I realised 3 rows up that I had dropped a stitch right in an awkward place, meaning that I had lost 2 stitches along the way… It takes a vvv long time to unknit 80 cobweb sts across 3 rows, so I figured I could pick up what I’ve done with the help of the internet. But no – the internet access was down as DB is upgrading our server PC. So I had a go myself, and it took as long for me to fix it over many attempts as it did for DB to hammer a cable in down the stairs to the wireless router and sort out the PC upstairs – about 45mins. I think I did a reasonably good job, but that ‘o’ keeps shouting at me. And the only issue with it is that the yarn isn’t twisted round. It is a little loose, but some tugging while blocking with a crochet hook should help with that. I’m so not going through that again though. That would mean a good hour and a half of unknitting and knitting back up, or probably the same again dropping and mending stitches that might end up wrong again anyway. So I think I can live with it. It isn’t that annoying in terms of it looking wrong, just annoying that I missed that tiny little thing. Given that I have 11 repeats for this side and 17 for the other, the grafting and the border and blocking to do by the first week in Feb, I think I’ll let it rest. Sometimes you just have to let things go. πŸ™‚
In other news, I forgot to say that I have signed up for Project Spectrum πŸ˜€ I’m really looking forward to it, and using it to gain some visual inspiration and motivation to use up some stash and finish one of the many many projects I have going. Please note that I have now updated the sidebar with all those horrible neverending projects. You see now? You see all of those?! That is just ridiculous… Luckily, the wonderful local lass and fellow crafter, Hazel put me onto something that a cross-stitcher had an idea for, that I think will apply to any unfinished project and, as Hazel says, can be flexible in order to allow for portability of work. You plan to set aside x number of hours for each project, regardless of how much you despise it or love it, in order to allow yourself to work on nice things at the same time as annoying things. Hazel has committed to a whopping 10 hours for each project, but I think I need to give myself a smaller number of hours and incorporate a number of repeats or a particular goal on the item in question. For example, I need to do 2 repeats a day on Print O the Wave to get it done in time, and before I go blind or tired on an evening. After that I move on to an hour of working on the gift glove (2 on weekends), as it is mainly st st with a little short row and simple increasing and decreasing. Then I can spend an hour or two on one of my older garments – I’ve picked out the hourglass sweater, seeing as I’ve been working on it for so long. Hazel is working on all of her projects at once, doing 10 hours on each one in turn, but because of my project needs (i.e. gifty or the need for a completion date) I’ll be working on 3 projects at once. This means that I will have finished at least two within a month, and can add the next projects on to the list (of which two will be further gift knitting, both socks again! But at least they will be quick). If my calculations are correct, I’ll have finished most of the list within a couple of months or so, and that leaves me open again for new projects and Project Spectrum work. I can even work the two together – the first two months of PS is blue, grey and white, which fits in with the hourglass sweater and Chrissie, and my Conway socks, plus at least two other things on my list! Talk about a goal to aim for πŸ™‚ This also means that you will probably see a lot more WiPs on here, to help me keep track of working on all this stuff.
Tomorrow, you’ll get to see the swift (if that’s what I’m getting from the post office), and the handbag – the light has been bad enough today thanks to the dreary cloudy and rainy weather we’ve had all day πŸ™

Tagged again :D

Jax has tagged me again for a Christmas meme, and seeing as I haven’t taken any photos of the cobweb lace shawl in progress or the new knitting Namaste bag that arrived the other day, and I still have to collect the yarn swift from the post office, I’m posting the answers now before I forget πŸ˜‰
Name 3 things –
that you had hanging on your tree:
Some wired ribbon, clear lights and some cut-glass red baubles, all of them either hand me downs or cheap from Wilkos – even the tree (a fake one) is a hand me down. We only had enough room for one when we moved into this house, so we’ve only had the tree up for a couple of years, and I had so missed having one that I’ve really enjoyed putting them up πŸ˜€
that you’ve eaten/drunk lots of:
I too have had large quantities of Lemsip and pretend Lemsips, but luckily I also ate copious amounts of Green and Blacks and drank large quantities of beers πŸ™‚
that you didn’t do this year but hope to do next year:
Decorate the bathroom (I bet it won’t happen this year either though),
replace the fire with a multifuel burner so we can save on gas bills and use all the newspapers we get for brickettes, and hopefully be a little more economical as well as environmentally helpful (there are no recycling schemes for our homes because of the way the road is, and we are too far from a recycling centre to cart everything we could take there on the bus – we don’t drive at all, so that kind of makes up for where our council can’t help us),
and save some money for retirement – I finish paying my student loans off in March, so I am debt free (apart from the mortgage obviously) in two months! That will mean I have Β£100 a month to be able to use for saving/pension schemes instead of paying off stupid student debts.
favourite presents this year:
Ipod Shuffle – it is tiny and was a total surprise πŸ˜€
The Namaste bag
Subscription to Craft magazine (electronic version)
that you’re glad you didn’t get for Christmas:
I’m kind of grateful for anything really, if people are kind enough to think of me, but I’m very very glad that there isn’t anything I need to worry about returning (apart from an organiser insert that was the wrong size, but that’s hardly much!)
Name 3 people to tag:
I won’t be tagging anyone else – I think I’ve answered this one late enough! But feel free to join in if you want to πŸ˜€
Coming soon:
pics of the bag :D, some random projects from the massive pile I have on the go (including a Print o the Wave wrap which I’m still unsure of the colour I’m working with for the wedding), and me playing with the swift (while winding yarn from Harrogate that will be used in an emergency for said colour issues with Print o the Wave). But I will say this now – cobweb weight isn’t nearly as hard as I thought it would be to work with, as long as the needles are right, you don’t break the first pair you picked out to use on a journey between work and home because you were carrying them in a Sainsburys plastic bag and kept accidentally stabbing your coat with one that refused to stay in the carrier, and you don’t cock up the first and second rows and end up frogging because someone you live with kept moving into the light and talking to you while you were at an important stage… πŸ˜‰ No, it is honestly quite easy to use πŸ˜€

Some more pics and a review

Happy new year everyone! I hope the next twelve months brings you joy and love and everything good! I’m hoping that this year, the first full year without any major time commitments, will be a gentle relaxing one. The past few years have been hectic at best, and sometimes very very very sad and difficult, but I’ve got through them, with the help of the wonderful DB and my family and friends. We hope nothing else will happen for a while, and make this year a quiet one. Although we already have an injury and a catalogue of illnesses, and various other issues that have me a little concerned, but there will also be two new additions (at least?) to friends’ families, which is wonderful πŸ˜€
As for knitting plans, I frightened myself today. I started to notice that I had a lot of things on the needles still to be dealt with, as I had suddenly developed 4 extra projects (the wedding wrap, some socks for a guy at work, and my sockret pal socks, and a chunky stripey cardi that materialised after an accidental purchase at Coldspring – more on that one another time, but since the purchase on Saturday, the back and one front piece are done), and that I still had one piece of Christmas gift knitting to finish. I worked out that I currently have 8 projects on the needles. Eek! So today I worked on 3 of them, with the idea that in order to plausibly finish these many things, I would need to knit for myself as well as others, so even if it takes weeks to finish everything, it will be finished eventually without getting too pissed off… At least I’m using stash up though while I do all these! So, as a result, I have promised myself that for the next 12 months I will finish everything properly. I’ll limit my knitting to what I am capable of without overloading myself. And there will be no purchases or starting of new projects until items are finished and there is space in my stash storage boxes for things to fit in with room to spare.
Hahahahahahaaha!
Anyway, I finally have some pics of the socks I made for Cherry for her birthday earlier this month (this month?! It seems like aeons ago…). They were just dragon scales manipulated with wider st st bars to fit the gauge and stitch count. The yarn is Schaeffer Anne, and has a beautiful lustre and sheen to it, but is also soft and machine washable πŸ™‚
cherry-dragon-socks-1.jpg
cherry-dragon-socks-2.jpg
Knitted on 2.5mm circs, to about 60 sts if I remember correctly – that’s my usual sock size. Cherry asked for a short leg, but they aren’t as short as they look on that second photo. The picture quality is much better than most recent pics because her hubby took them and emailed them to me – ta Richard. But please also note that they are not wonky like that pic ;D As you can see there is much pooling, but it differed so much between the socks that I don’t think we minded that much – you get to see the side that doesn’t shoe on the opposite sock, if that makes sense, so the pooling is on the top of the sock and reverses between socks so that you get a flash of all the colours in different ways. There is some difference between rows in the colours too, so the purple splodge is actually different coloured purples etc. I haven’t decided what to use the remainder of the yarn for yet, but I’m sure I’ll think of something…
Also, as promised, I also have a review of Colinette Jitterbug too, now that the gift socks are finished. There are some good points and some bad points. I made the Zokni pattern which may have produced some bias to the review, and may not be the most ideal basis for testing this yarn, and this colourway. Ok, so the yarn holds pattern and shape well, but while knitting I had a bugger of a time trying to see whether I was knitting it correctly (the chart for the pattern is done in reverse of how I normally read them, so it is done left to right, and I had to knit the pattern twice and frog once too until I knew I was doing it properly). But once I had a few repeats down in the correct direction, I still had issues being able to see the leaf pattern fully. I figured blocking would fix that though, and it has. Just a quick wash has defined the lace pattern yet the sock shape is still pure, and what started as a little harsh has softened up a bit and feels like it might be good and cosy
The yarn is firm, well spun and doesn’t split, so it does lend itself to use in complex patterns rather than straight st st, but the colourways work well with st st, and there isn’t really any pooling at all. It is soft too, but because of the sturdiness of the yarn (the end yet to be woven in went through the knitting and washing process without unravelling or fluffing up at all) it should hold up well as a day-to-day sock and not just something fancy, and it is supposed to be fully machine washable too, which is always good. The colours are good and vivid, and don’t pool, although some dye came out during blocking, it wasn’t enough to make me think that there might be colour fade issues any worse than any other yarn. I’d probably have bought the yarn again on the basis of these plus points…
IF it were not for some big issues. The yarn is sold primarily as a sock yarn, but usable for other knitting, to be knit on 3.25mm, making it a little heavier than many sock yarns. However, the freebie pattern on the yarn label suggests for a womens’ small to medium to work it on 2.5mm on 60 sts, which just so happens to be how I work most of my socks. As the yarn is sold as a heavier weight, it is unsurprising that the yardage is less than your average sock yarn too – 267m a hank, in comparison to 350m ish on the yarns I normally get. Now, I do have round about 30g left over from 100g, but that is because I’ve made the socks for a UK size 4, with a shortish leg (4 pattern repeats plus 10 rows of rib, so that makes them 58 rows before a short row heel). I wouldn’t recommend buying just one hank for anything larger – you could squeeze maybe an inch or two more on the leg, but you certain wouldn’t want to rely on one hank for any sock above about a UK 5 with a longer leg than these. That makes for some very expensive socks…
The next issue I have is something I encountered while knitting the first sock. In the middle of the hank, about a quarter of the way along the foot, I found a knot. I couldn’t undo it, and it wasn’t until later that I realised that it was a break in the yarn. As the yarn is superwash, and the knot was small, I knit past it (I know I know! I’m sorry πŸ™ I’ve committed a terrible sock faux pas there :S), and worked it into the stitch, so it is barely noticable in looks or in wearing the fabric, and these socks aren’t meant for wearing outside the house as they would be too bulky in shoes, so they won’t go walking far anyway. Excuses made, my qualm isn’t about the knot in the yarn. This happens often enough for me to not mind too much, even if I don’t see it often in sock yarn. What bugs me, is the knitted fabric, and the changes in it.
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See that colour change? Before the knot, I have some lovely splashes of colour, with no pooling or striping or anything like that, and plenty of firey (that doesn’t look right, but you get the idea) mottling. After the knot, striping. Not so much of the dark browny red. On their own, fine. Knotted together into one hank, when they are clearly two different dye lots? NOT good. I’m not happy about that at all. There can’t have been as much as 20g left over of that original dye lot before they knotted the two yarns together, so why do that?! The yarns clearly do not match! I’d be really miffed if the sock was st st all the way, but luckily it isn’t too obvious on the top of the sock. I know that not every hank of yarn will have the issue, but I’m so not impressed that they did that in something that will be used in a way that you can see the colour change really easily. In the heavier yarns like Point 5, you wouldn’t get that, as they are too thick to knot together, and the colours are always mottled, but in Jitterbug, why should it being a lighter yarn for socks make knotting together ok? You might as well knot together two different but similar shades. Can you tell that this pissed me off yet?
These two issues put me off buying the yarn again. I’d probably splash out on the Speed Demon yarn instead of this, and use the extra cost to remind me that the colours might sometimes be different to the purchasing image, but at least you know it will work and you’ll have matching socks from the same hank instead of one mottled and one striping… And if I wanted to make adult male socks, buying two hanks at a tenner a piece when the colours might not match doesn’t appeal to me either. I will still send the other hank to my sockret pal and see how she gets on with it, but I’ll be warning her about my experiences, and at least the dye lot issue will be relatively infrequent enough to make me hope she’s got a good one. And it is a shame that they couldn’t take more care over their yarn marketing and winding – the colourways are lovely. Their dyeing has always screamed for sock yarn as the colours are so well put together and vivid or muted to just the right level. If you are looking for a yarn that does what it says on the tin for the same kind of price, shop at Piece of Beauty or Posh Yarns or Hip Knits, where you know what kind of colouring you’ll get, and what effect it will have when knit up. Even if you get pooling, at least you know it will still look nice (like with Cherry’s socks – I love the way they pooled πŸ™‚ I’d still like it if I can make some more that don’t though…).
Ok, moan over. My Kim Hargreaves kit arrived today, so that made life ok. But I’ve been winding the Piece of Beauty cobweb yarn, and it is a mess πŸ™ about 6 hours of winding split over 2 days, and I’m not quite half way through it. A swift wouldn’t help this one – I think the yarn being so fine as it is just got tangled in the dye bath or something. Every single loop has to be untangled from other strands to varying degrees. I’ll be making several small balls and splicing the ends together. I don’t see me starting to knit this till it is all wound up, and that won’t be for a week nearly to save my brain from insanity. In fact I’ve ordered some Jaggerspun Zephyr with my new swift (which has just been ordered :D) as a back up in case I can’t untanlgle the Posh Yarn, as it is a little heavier than cobweb so will knit up quicker in an emergency if I fling the remaining cobweb yarn out the window in a fit of stupidity and stress. And I won’t let myself knit the cardi kit yet till I’ve cleared some needles. Honest guv.
Ok, now I’ll definitely shut up πŸ™‚ Time to do something nice and perhaps non-knitting related, like playing We Love Katamari, perhaps the best PS2 game ever… πŸ˜€