(Don’t miss the bird caption.)
Last week, I had this road trip coming up; fine yarn on small needles wasn’t going to do it for knitting in the car (bouncy bounce!), I needed something bigger than that. I went looking for–I wasn’t quite sure what.
That 70/30 mink/cashmere that had been waiting for the perfect design leaped out at me. (Mine is in English Lavender, not listed at the moment.) Size 5mm needles in lace. Yes.
I wanted to at last just see what it felt like to work with; you don’t know a yarn till you’ve knit it, no matter what it feels like in the skein, and I wanted to know if it was something I’d want more of as the new company comes out with more colors. (Note: the mink are treated humanely and sheared, not slaughtered. The guy flew to China to see and verify that for himself.) I wanted to justify its purchase; I wanted to justify coveting more, because I certainly do.
I cast on. I got a few rows done.
I did a few more the next day–and wondered what on earth about it was defying me.
And so I by-then dragged it along with me to Ruth’s, where, with mistakes, grumbling, ripping and redoing while looking out the window, I got a grand total of one 198-stitch row done after an hour and put it down and didn’t pick it up again. I wanted to see the road. I wanted to see the scenery change. I didn’t want to miss a thing. Knitting could wait.
I again pushed myself at it yesterday, finally got it far enough along to spread it out to see… And saw. The screamingly obvious goof my brain had been trying to tell me about all along. Too many stitches done too plain at the edges=stockinette=curling. A total beginner’s mistake, even in a limp yarn. How on earth could I have thought I could let that slide…?! With a yarn that expensive, you do it and you do it right.
I frogged it to zero.
It is now happily almost knitting itself, humming along, the yarn perfect and the design is too now and it was hard to put it down long enough to come over here and blog about it. I now know that it adds just the slightest, just ever so slightest, most demure peachfuzz effect that totally heightens the joy of the project when you frog this yarn. It’s gorgeous. You should knit a whole shawl, rip it out, and knit it up again. Really. You should. You’ll love it. Honest.
(Seriously: this is nice stuff.)