Lorraine, owner of Cottage Craft Angora, a small mill, wanted to know what I thought of her qiviut. No, she really wanted to know what I thought of her qiviut. Her 100%. (Picture of a Musk Ox here.)

Now, I’ve bought her Arctic Blend; one 2-ply skein, just to try it out, a 30/30/20/20 qiviut/baby alpaca/silk/merino mix, and dyed it myself, exploring.

It was exquisite. I could be satisfied with this soft stuff oh yes most definitely forever. It made a lot more of a lace scarf than I’d expected to get out of it–for, are you ready for this, ten bucks. Ten. And shipping.

My Mom and my sister Carolyn both wanted that one, out of all the rollaboard-suitcase’s-worth of knitted items I brought to the family reunion. Actually, all the women in the family who saw it did. Anyone would.

I lamented when the website said awhile ago that that blend was sold out; when more appeared just a few days ago, I selfishly ordered some quick before mentioning it to the blog now. Note that I am being very nice in telling you all about it when I can’t afford to stock up more than one color and weight to work with for right now, and I really really like the 2-ply. Haven’t tried the 3-ply. Yet. (Don’t take all the navy, okay, guys?)

Just one more skein… How’s that for a variant on the classic knitter line.

And then. The mailman rang the doorbell this afternoon. There was a skein of that Strawberry Red 100% qiviut from Canada, 44 grams’ worth, for me to go play with. Christmas!

I just happened to be wearing a blouse that matched the yarn as I opened the package; yes, I might like that color. Like, a lot. In the 100%, I would call it more a burgundy, myself.

She’d told me it was coming, actually, and I had just the pattern in mind for when it might arrive.

Ever planned on a name for a baby and when it was born it just wasn’t it? Yeah, I once had our family’s doctor stop by the hospital in New Hampshire to check on my newborn and then he stepped into my room to say, very pleased, that Michelle was doing well now–and I’ve always wondered if he just thought I was an exhausted new mom as I did a moment’s doubletake of an unspoken (Who? Oh right, right, we did change it), “Thanks!” (Duh.)

So. One look at that yarn and I threw out my plans and rewrote and re-mathed.

I doodled a bit to get a feel for gauge. I cast on. I kept the longtail long enough (and it came out exactly to the 1/2 inch) so that I could wrap it across the back of every bump as I purled the first row, an extra strand of yarn to strengthen that edge. Not my usual double-the-cast-on neck edge, though; this way left me the possibility of running a bit shy without having to start over and without risking wasting any.

A few minutes later I knit the first three stitches of a 126-stitch row wrong.

I thought about it a moment and realized, wait. Extra time with pure qiviut. This is a privilege. And not only that, after tinking I can weigh and measure exactly how much yarn that row took up to try to get a better idea of how far I can go with my 320 yards.

Zero grams. It came up zero grams. I can knit this stuff forever.