Weeners! We Have Weeners!

Rain! We actually got about 30 minutes of rain this afternoon! I think (hope) we've turned the corner on this brutal heat - the last few days have held out a promise that Fall is right around the corner.



I wanted to take pics of two newest skeins of yarn I've finished but we spent the afternoon playing the ponies! I did win $10.80 on one horse in the 5th race, woo hoo! It was fun and so nice to be outside without a blazing sun. Sometimes I wonder if I am part vampire, I avoid the sun that much.

But I have a weener here on the old blog! I consulted the Random Number Generator and the winner is #16!! Yay!

I'll tell you a little story. When I was a girl I was completely horse crazy. Though I didn't own a horse, I did ride regularly with a stable and even competed in some of the local horse shows. The one year I competed and won some blue ribbons I wore #16 on my back. I've liked that number ever since. So I was truly delighted when the Random Number Generator spat out #16.

I must have horses on my brain today.

Anyway, this little yarn giveaway was fun. Thank you, everyone for your sweet comments. I enjoyed this enough that I might have more giveaways in the very near future.

SarahB, send me your address using the linky in my profile and I hope you enjoy knitting this yarn - I can't wait to see how it turns out!

Prize Winners!!

Sunday afternoon, August in Brooklyn. I want to take a nap!

But first I have some things to share. Like the promised and long overdue Tour de Fleece wrap up. You recall I wanted to spin 3 lbs of fiber. This was the pile before I started.

And this the pile I ended up spinning.

Not all of it, but I am very very pleased with the results so I am happy. Some stats for you: I spun 2.25 lbs of fiber, 2,670 yards of yarn. By my standards that's alot but there are spinners on Ravelry who spun 7 and 8 lbs of fiber. Whoa! I need to take a vacation next year and devote an entire week to spinning.

The Hello Yarn pink/green/boggy brown yarn is destined to be a sweater. I have over 680 yards in that ginormous skein and I was very lucky to come into possession of one more bag of this highly coveted fiber! With another 4 oz to spin up I should have enough for a cute cropped cardigan and I think I have a pattern in mind!

You all know Zinnia is destined to be a sweater and yes, thanks to the kindness of blog reading friends, I now have the pattern! Zinnia has been doubly lucky for me, by the way, because on the last day of the Tour I submitted a photo to the Natural Yarn thread on Ravelry and won a prize! Woo Hoo, Yay! More fiber, coming right up!

Time to spread some Handspun Love. As my thanks for your ongoing support and encouragement, loyal comments and far-flung friendship, I'm putting Istanbul Sunset up for a Prize Giveaway! Yup, that's what I'm sayin!

Simply leave a comment to this post no later than Sunday August 15 and I'll select a winner using Random Number Generator.

Some of you have never knit with handspun before and trust me, this will spoil you for more. And hey, maybe I will coax a few of you over to the dark side that is spinning. It's not the worst thing that could happen...heh heh. :)

So rock on with your comments and good luck everyone! Oh and you can get all the technical deets for the yarn here.

Where Did I Put That Thing, Anyway?

Here we are, August already! The Tour de Fleece feels like it was a million years ago, and I haven't done a good blog wrap up post. I promise, I have one in the wings. With special surprises, too!

But I wanted to tell you a funny.

I finished spinning up all the Gray Shetland, my Zinnia. This yarn is wonderful. I can't stop fondling it and I pinch myself because I sort of can't believe I pulled off 5 skeins, 1700+ yards of consistent, mostly even sport weight yarn! Seriously, I am that excited about this yarn.

So of course the next thing I get to obsess over is what shall Zinnia become? Oh, fun! Honestly, the planning can be as much fun as the doing. Or no, the planning is a part of the doing, really. And it's fun. For me. Shut up!

And! I think I've found what I want to do, the Gathered Pullover from Interweave Knits.

Now that I've landed in this place, the past 10 days have been about mulling over the design modifications I'll make and organizing myself to give this project my full attention.

So last night around midnight I decide I'd like to go to bed with the pattern and read it through, just to familiarize myself, you know?

I searched the book case for Interweave, Winter 2007. Not there. Should have been. Hmmm. Search the desk, my WIP pile, the dining room table, the kitchen book case (highly unlikely), the family room book case, and a few other places. No Winter 2007 anywhere. I found Fall, I found Spring. No Winter. Hmmmm.

Next, as a last ditch effort, (it's now nearly 1AM), I go online to Ravelry and quick search the other patterns in that issue. You know, so I could maybe cross reference to something I may have knit in the past?

And then it dawns on me. I never bought that issue! No wonder I couldn't find it! It simply doesn't exist in my home. DOH.

Spin City meets Hipnic on the High Line

Spin City's meet up on Monday evening at the High Line converged with an event called Hipnic, who also did their own spinning, of sorts. The event was captured and posted to YouTube -

Over the course of the evening, the lines between the two groups merged into a single cohesive whole. Which is nicely described by the New York Times.


I'm still kicking myself for bailing out but that kitchen thing needed attention since the plumber didn't get to us till Monday. Oh well, it was a lovely evening for all my friends!

Push On

A nasty head cold, insufferable heat, plumbing disconnected in the kitchen since Tuesday, husband with a flu. Life is grand over at Chez Knithound, I tell ya.

We got a new counter top. After 7 years of living with...are you ready for this...marine varnished plywood...(ahem)...we finally got the new counter top. BUT. The sink was disconnected Tuesday morning, I drove it out to the fabricator in Long Island (took 1/2 a day!), they installed the counter tops yesterday and here we are, Saturday evening with no kitchen plumbing! Seems the fabricator failed to instruct me to have the plumber come back after they were finished. Um...didn't you say you were reinstalling? Ohhhh, remounting, not reconnecting! aha. And the plumber called this morning, yes we will be by later today. Not.

So here we are, both sick as can be, the kitchen in complete disarray, the AC firing on high but not cutting it. What's a knithound to do but spin yarn.

The Tour de Fleece/Tour de France ends tomorrow. I won't be finished with the 3 pounds I set as the goal, but I am making my way through that lovely Shetland roving.

It's wonderful. 408 yards, 12 wpi. The second skein just came out of the bath, 368 yards. More singles tonight. I have nothing better to do the rest of the evening, and at least making yarn is taking the edge off my bad case of cranky.

Loop Cloud = Tweedy Yarn

Those of you who know me on Facebook know this is my profile pic:

Well, that poofy cloud (shout out to Steph who works her magic on a daily basis) in my arms became yarn sometime around March - April. I have no excuse for not showing it to you sooner.

Spinning this gave me a chance to practice long draw, an obsession that began with this yarn and shows no signs of abatement. It was interesting to feel the differences in the various fibers as they moved through my fingers.

I was a bit surprised at how tweedy the yarn became upon finishing. I'd never worked a cloud like this before and didn't know what to expect.

Now the next challenge is to find the right project for it. We had a lively discussion about various shawl patterns one evening in my spin group. And I queued up one in particular that might work.

But I could also use this in a woven project, and with weaving, I don't even know what I don't know. A whole world of unknown possibilities.

I have over 440 yards of 2 ply, DK yarn from about 5.5 oz of fiber. Lots of options with this yield. It will work itself out in time.

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Oh, one more thing: YOU GUYS!!!! You are all so supportive and thank you thank you thank you for your patience and understanding while I beat a dead horse worked out my thoughts on my HOBBIES. I really appreciated hearing from all of you.

Shetland

We're headed into the third week of the Tour de Fleece and to date I've finished two yarns (pics to come soon) and am well into the biggest pile of fluff I'd included in the Tour spinning set - the gray Shetland.

You see two bobbins here, but I'm actually on my 5th bobbin. With each bobbin holding approximately 3 oz of woolen spun singles, it means I'll finish up nearly one pound of singles sometime this evening. And judging by what still remains to spin, I'd say this roving is closer to 2 lb! Looks like I underestimated the fiber amount by 8 oz and this is great news because there should be enough yarn to make a sweater! Spinning a long draw moves fast despite the challenge of maintaining consistency. It's going well enough and overall I am pretty excited about this one.

The Tour ends Sunday and if I can get these singles into some finished 2 ply, it will be an accomplishment. I had set out to do more, but this infernal heat has really hampered my progress! Our house has room air conditioners, but not in every room. Every year that passes I recall how much I thoroughly dislike this time of year - I am so grateful I don't live further south where this beastly season lasts even longer. UGH.

About That Hobby...

Hi. I'm back and if you don't mind, I'll continue with the thoughts on work and play, ego and identity. Where was I? Oh yea, I was struggling with how to monetize the knitting and then I saw that article in the New York Times....

About three years ago I started a new job at a large corporation. And you'll recall I noted the self help industry's implied message that I am a lesser human because I wasn't pursuing the THING. The livin' the dream thing. I took it to heart with the result that I was twisted in despair. I resisted the day job, convinced of a better life...somewhere else.

The despair pushed me to spend money and time with a coach and I took classes to gain a license. While knitting and spinning, I was also doing a ton of soul searching. That New York Times article arrived at an interesting moment in this time line, because I was about to take a serious leap. But then I didn't. For a ton of reasons, I didn't.

Around that time I had a conversation with a friend, an artist who has struggled all her adult life to earn a living and lives pretty much hand to mouth. The reality of that kind of living is, it consumes so much energy.

Anyway, she said, "You are so lucky. You have a job that pays the bills and that means you can pursue your knitting and spinning without all that pressure." A simple and obvious statement, but the way she said it and the tone of relief she expressed for me, was profound and I was ready to hear it. In that one moment, something shifted.

The shift has meant that I now embrace a very simple concept that I somehow missed in all that noise and psychic, manic energy. Please don't laugh too loud, but I finally realized and accepted that it's simply okay to have a hobby.

That is, having a hobby is valuable in and of itself. It makes a person interesting. It adds dimension to a human existence. A person can have a job, and have hobbies and be happy and well rounded. Fulfilled. Most important for me, it is liberating. Because there isn't the pressure to earn from what I love, I can love it even more. Without that pressure I can follow any path or or branch I want. No limits, no time constraint, no worry about making it work.

I know!! DUH. Really. Seriously. DUH!! Call me a "Sunday knitter" if you wish. I won't take offense, nor do I scorn the thought. My identity is that of knitter and spinner, and maybe soon, weaver. I identify with the hobbies and have a job, too.

Thank goodness I saw the light before it was too late.

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The Tour de Fleece continues, and the yarn you see above is Hello Yarn Fiber Club, Winter Storage, 686 yards of DK/Worsted weight. It's a monster huge skein, 8 oz of fiber converted to yarn during the biggest heat wave to come along so far this year.

While I am noodling around with the notions of work, play, ego, identity and creating value from fluff, sticks and string, this showed up last week on Mason-Dixon Knitting:

I thought it was amazing timing! So I reached out to chucksmithnyc for permission to share. He graciously agreed I need to pay it forward. Renate speaks truth. Maybe I will get lucky and meet her.

Tour de Fleece

Oh my gosh! I just realized I may have forgotten to show you what my spinning plans for the Tour de Fleece! I am so sorry. Let's fix that right now:

Three pounds of fiber. The giant gray balls total 1.5 lbs of Shetland lamb roving, from a lamb named Zinnia. I love Zinnias by the way. There's also .5 lb of black Shetland roving from the same farm, Wild Apple Hill Farm in Hudson, NY.

Then the handpainted fibers are from three different clubs - we have Shetland (Double Dog Dare) from Southern Cross Fibres, South African Fine Wool (Istanbul Sunset) from Spunky Eclectic and two bumps of Finn (Winter Storage) from Hello Yarn Fiber.

My last two posts featured the singles I've already spun up, and over the course of the Tour I'll continue to post the progress!

Do You Think You Can Sell That?

Judging from the comments you all left on my last post, it looks like we are all in the same boat! Glad to have you aboard! Heh. Boy, do I know it. Bethany, you hit on the second thing I hear (we all hear) often - "You know, you could sell that." I guess it's meant to be complimentary, indicating that the project is so well done, it has monetary value. That people would actually spend money on it. They would willingly buy it. But we all know the truth - no one would pay what it's really worth, when you factor the time that went into making it.

What I want to talk about, actually to mull over, in this public forum, is work. You see, I've been thinking through lots of stuff when it comes to the idea of work. What work is, and what it means to me.

Four years ago I started knitting. I was initially attracted to the pretty colors - that's what drew me in to the local yarn store. Then it became about the tactile experience, the idea that I could make something with my hands. It was empowering! It was FUN! It was a way to channel some energy into something productive. And it represented the opposite of the tech world I live in 9 to 5.

Very quickly I also realized it was a fantastic way to shut out all the turmoil going on around me. Believe me when I tell you, there was much turmoil. Which we can maybe cover in the future, but not for now.

Throughout this time, the little voice was asking, 'Is there a way to turn this into a new career?" "How can I make money at this?" "What's the new and unique thing I can bring to market?" And I had other voices saying the same thing, "You know, you could sell that." "You should open a Yarn Store!" "Why don't you sell what you make, then at least you would be doing something."

And of course, the entire Self Help Industry is/was touting the notion that earning a living at doing the one thing that makes you happy is the key to all salvation. There is the implication in all of this that a person is somehow a lesser human being if she hasn't cracked the code on melding the passion with the money making. I recall a conversation in which a painter told me he was struggling to find a way to be a full time 'artist'. He scorned the notion of being a "Sunday painter". His identity requires he earn a living from his painting and anything less appears to be unacceptable.

You see, I had allowed myself to be convinced that if I felt as passionately about knitting and spinning and fiber then I needed to find a way to monetize it. To earn my living off it. That it can only be considered real if I could translate that passion into earning a living. And this notion got me tangled up for about three years, causing me great angst. I questioned my choices, and asked myself how can I make change, change what I do with my time.

And then I stumbled across this, which made me hit the pause button. What is work? What is fun? What if the thing I have fun doing becomes work? Would it still be fun? What is more important? Work? Ego? Identity? Fun?

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Many of you asked about the bobbin I posted yesterday. It's 4 oz. of Spunky Eclectic hand painted South African Fine wool, called Istanbul Sunset from Club offering in November 2009. I spun it up on Saturday and Sunday, and intend to Navajo ply it after it rests a bit. I like how it looks so far. And this isn't the first time that the spun singles are nicer than the fiber, to my eye at least.

What Are You Going to DO With It All?

Because of my Mom's physical proximity, she sees much of the stuff I make over the days and weeks. She often admires it politely, rarely even touches it and then invariably asks, "What in the WORLD are you going to DO with it?" This comes up most times when I show her my yarns.

There is often eye-rolling accompanying the question. I have other relatives who kind of do the same thing.

It's clear they don't understand what I am doing. They certainly do not understand that there is joy in the making. That for me, it's all that really matters. If it gets made into something else, well that's fine. But if it remains as yarn in a skein, and I had a good time making it, that's fine too.

They come from a time when everything needed a purpose. And I suppose my hobby seems frivolous to them. My Mom thinks I should be selling the yarn and knitting to make money. Otherwise, she thinks I am wasting my time.

I've arrived at a place where when the question is asked, I reply, "Oh, am I supposed to DO something with it?!"

More Bobbin Clearing

Well we are full on into the Tour de Fleece, but I did want to show you one more yarn before I go into complete overload.

This is a 3 ply yarn made from Hello Yarn Club fiber, called Parritch. The fiber is Targhee, one of my favorites because it is so squishy and bouncy. After I finished plying and put this baby into a nice warm bath it exploded into a wonderful bouncy yarn. Just like I thought it would.

There's about 344 yards of fingering/sport weight yarn here, enough for a simple pair of incredibly bouncy squwooshy socks. If I ever get back to knitting again... (not gonna think about it right now.)

Before I sign off, I want to thank you all for your comments and well wishes. I've got quite a few blog posts piling up in my head, things I've been thinking about and wanting to put out there - about life, career choices, moving forward, being centered. There are also some lovely projects that deserve some blog attention.

Alas, these will all have to wait till another day, because right now I really want to get back to spinning for the Tour.

Bobbin Clearing

Well, we are getting down to the wire with Tour de Fleece a mere 4 days away. Yay! Time to get those bobbins cleared!

Remember the Romney rolags I hand carded from the Natchwoolie club? Here's the yarn.

Pretty pictures, but what you don't see is all the 'faults'. I'll fess up right now. I can be a real miserly type and just hate 'wasting' fiber. Ha. Joke's on me, because in the end, the little junky short cuts and bits should have been discarded with ruthless abandon before getting near my hand cards. Instead, they ended up in the rolags and I now have neppy, lumpy yarn.

Plus I'm still getting the hang of the long draw. And to top it all off, I over plied, something I did on both yarns presented here. Note to self - ease up on the plying, yo!

The result is very rustic, and a bit scratchy. In fairness, the fiber was sort of scratchy to begin with. Sensitive types will not enjoy this yarn. It will take some thinking to figure out what to do with it, but I am glad I spun it for no other reason than it serves as an object lesson for me. The biggest lesson: be absolutely ruthless about what goes onto the hand cards. Garbage in, garbage out. And slow down the treadling on the ply, girl!

Technical details: 218 yds., Aran weight, woolen spun (mostly), 2 ply from 4 oz. of natural dyed Romney locks and hand carded into rolags.

The second yarn off the bobbins is this tweedy mix. Maybe you remember me trying to seduce all you spinners out there to head over to Knot My Day Job on esty back in January.

I loved spinning this batt and learned alot while making this yarn. It was fun tearing off sections and just spinning in a carefree long draw. This is the one where long draw finally clicked.

So here's what went into the making of the batt: hand dyed Merino, Alpaca, Silk (Bombyx), wool neps, faux cashmere and Angelina for the sparkle! The batt was so sexy I had a mad crush the minute I spotted it. Still do! I call this yarn Tweed and Sparkle. It reminds me of a country girl who thinks she needs to punk it out a bit upon arrival in the big city. Sparkle and shine!

It's over plied like the first yarn but not as much. Considering the span of 4 months between start and finish, I am pleased with the semi-consistency. Again, a woolen spun which takes practice!

Technical details: Approximately 240 yds, mostly Aran weight, from 5 oz of fiber, spun woolen, 2 ply from a carded batt. Lovely stuff. And best of all, I have another batt to practice on, after the Tour!

Stay tuned, one more yarn before the big event!

Mid June Progress

Thank you everyone, for your concern and suggestions on how to heal my hands! They are doing better. In an attempt to do things other than knitting, I went horse back riding a few weeks ago. Fun, but really hard on the wrists! Ooops.


Those of you who are riders will surely see many things wrong in my form, but considering I haven't been riding in over 20 years, I was amazed I could stay on the horse, post a trot and keep him moving. Tonka is half draft horse and I really like how solid he feels and how nicely he moves! If my hands can stand it, it might be killer fun to work with this guy, doing a bit of basic Dressage training, something we could learn together.

In the meantime, I bought a brace for my right hand and wearing that for a few days really helped. The pain and numbness is mostly in the thumb. I'm trying to knit without putting too much pressure on the right thumb, which is sometimes rather comical and all the time awkward feeling. Mostly I knit in much smaller bursts.

So that sweater I'm making? It's moving along very slowly (13 inches of the body and nearly one full sleeve completed). All my other knitting projects are just not happening right now. There is some crochet, a small project that takes little time and doesn't put too much strain on my hands.

These coasters are going to be a set of six, intended as a house gift for my boss later this summer.

I am spinning. Thankfully I am able to do that in slightly bigger bursts, and if I use a long draw, then things move along quite nicely. I'm trying to fill up and then clear off all my bobbins before the big July event, Le Tour de Fleece.

This bobbin set contains the Hello Yarn Targhee in the Parritch colorway As you can see it will be 3 ply when I put the jumbo flyer on the wheel. I loved spinning this fiber, though because I was doing a worsted draw, it caused me some pain, thus it took a little longer to reach this stage. I wanted to really control the gauge on these singles in order to achieve a nice, well rounded yarn. So far, so good.

This bobbin contains half of the Knot My Day Job red batt that I started back in January. I got distracted, took the bobbin off the wheel and then forgot about it. Now I want to finish it! Of course, I don't have a sample nor any notes so when I put it back on the wheel I had no recollection on how to set my whorl and brake band. Oh well, I decided to go with what I wanted now, so 2/3 of this bobbin are heavier singles than the first 1/3. I'm doing a supported long draw and moving rather quickly, as it doesn't strain my right wrist as much. The second bobbin is well underway; it won't be long before we see how this yarn turns out.

But before I put the jumbo flyer on and start plying, I want to fill up one more set of bobbins. These wonderful rolags are from 4 oz. of Romney locks dyed using wonderful natural dyes in pinks and magentas. The fiber comes from one of my newer clubs, and one I haven't discussed on this blog to date. This is the April offering from Natchwoolie Steady Dye It club. Six months of dyed fibers and rovings using all natural dyes.

Most of the club shipments have been Merino, either top or roving. This one was locks and it was intriguing to me. It necessitated buying hand carders to process. In about a month's time I carded up the locks into a lovely pile of rolags. I found carding to be a pleasant chore, unlike combing which for some reason I do not relish in the same way.

All of this needs to be finished before July 3, the start of the Tour de Fleece. I have my fibers selected and I have an idea on how I will spin most of them. Maybe I can find some time later this week to show you what I want to do.

In the meantime, I want to get outside and enjoy the 7th Avenue Street Fair. Happy Father's Day to all the Dads out there.

Numb

Back in April I grew weary of all the gift knitting and needed something for me. The PhotoMan was out of town, and I devoted the down time to knitting this as quickly as I could. I wanted to get some wearing time before the weather turned too warm.

But knitting with this yarn (Classic Elite Soft Linen) made my hands feel strange. After about 30 minutes I felt like I needed hand cream and the texture would skeeve me out a bit.

Still, I like the way this scarf turned out - the pattern is Butternut Scarf by Anne Hanson. I used up all 3 skeins in the making, so yay for more stash burning.

I actually think this project may have caused some nerve damage, because it's been hard to knit ever since. I have a strange numbness in my palms and fingers, things are tingly and heavy. It became apparent that the culmination of constant knitting for four solid years has affected my hands.

And so, I've forced myself to simply stop. I haven't knit in nearly two weeks. And I am barely spinning right now - just a bit on the spindle and a few minutes a day on the wheel. For me, a huge break in the routine. It's a bit maddening, and although it makes me feel a bit lost, it is forcing me to find new ways to fill my time.

The good news is it appears to be helping, because the numbness is easing up a bit. A forced moratorium isn't a bad thing. It may mean less frequent visits to this blog, too. And less time on the computer in general.

I'm going to take the summer to reflect on all of it.

Sprout

No drama, no issues. Just a nice, pleasant spin project with pleasing results. Sprout, from Southern Cross Fibres, the September 2009 club offering. This is a nice mix of fibers - 80% Polwarth (which the spinning world is currently bonkers over) and 20% Tussah Silk.

I didn't think I'd be able to control this fiber because of the silk, but it worked fine. I took my time, used a worsted draw, and ended up with 342 yards of Fingering weight yarn.

I see something incorporating a Feather and Fan motif for this one, what do you think?

Foggy

A work in progress - Fog Sweater, using Cascade Eco Wool. The yarn was purchased for this project over a year ago. As many of you knitters know, these skeins are huge, - 8 oz of yarn per skein so four of them nearly fill a storage bin and weigh 2 lbs! Converting the stored yarn into a garment will take a big bite out of storage space!

This pattern is knit in the round which is great in that the front and back will be done up to the arm pits but as the knitting grows, so it grows in weight. The weight, combined with 1x1 rib strains my wrists and I need to take frequent breaks. I imagine by the time we get to the shoulders this thing will slow down considerably simply because of the physical effort required.

You can see it started as a much larger garment but I quickly realized it was way way way too big. This happened about two weeks ago on a Sunday evening, halfway through an episode of "Treme", on HBO. It went like this: "Honey, I think this sweater may be a bit big on you. Do you mind trying it on if I take this off the needles and put it on a lifeline?" "Do I have to? It's going to be hot! " "It's four inches of knitting. How hot can that be?"

Thirty minutes later we had the verdict and I went to bed. Defeated and relieved. An entire weekend of knitting wasted, but relieved the newer version would take less time because there will be fewer stitches to knit!

I used a cable cast on, which when putting 240 stitches onto a needle makes sense to me, rather than trying to estimate the length required for a long tail cast on. And it works well for ribbing, this is a 4x2 ribbed edge.

Now I want to talk about something that's really bugging me about my knitting. These ridges? Do you see them? I noticed them when I knit the little baby bolero, and chalked it up to the yarn, which is a very fine merino cable ply yarn that looks like a single but is actually lots of teeny tiny 2 ply yarns twisted into a single ply. The next time it showed up was when I knit one of the pairs of fingerless mitts, and again, I thought it was the yarn, because that yarn has a similar put up. But it's coming up again, in this sweater.

And this project uses a woolen spun two ply, Cascade Eco Wool. My experience with this yarn goes back to last summer when I knit the ill-fated Garter Ridge Blanket. I hated the way the project looked and abandoned it after knitting all the sections. I don't know about you, but I find Garter Stitch to be very unforgiving, showing all manner of tension flaws. And this yarn is also unforgiving in terms of tension irregularities. Which made the combination of the two just awful!

Which leads me to realize that it's me. I am doing something in the knitting to cause these problems! I think I am tugging the stitches when moving from knit to purl. Anyway it's bugging the shit out of me! Each time I look at this project it's all I see.

These kinds of technical flaws are a sure fire way to kill my enthusiasm for a project and I have to work hard to overcome my nagging doubts. Should I rip it down and start the body section over again? Should I learn to knit English style? Would that improve the appearance? Is this issue simply an unintended consequence of knitting 1x1 rib with a woolen spun yarn?

Yes, I swatched. This problem wasn't evident in the swatch. I have an idea: maybe I should stop here, go knit up a sleeve and block it to see if the washing will ease out the issues. And use the sleeve as a guide for how this honkin' huge man sized body will work up once it's been blocked.

Well, then, thank you! I think I've come up with a trial solution, now that I've thought it through a bit, so thanks for listening.

Gretel

My Mom's birthday is just around the corner so I worked up a hat that's been in my queue for some time. The pattern, Gretel, is full of twisty cable turns, whew!

I made the medium slouch version (there are three setups for this pattern), because I didn't think I'd have enough yarn to make the slouchiest size, which has 10 more rows of twists and turns. I'm quite pleased with the outcome and Mom seems to like it, too.