Tuesday, April 7, 2009

A lingering look at winter (knits)

It wouldn't have made a difference to my hat disaster if I'd read the 101 tips advertised on the cover of the spring/summer 2009 issue of Knit Simple before suppertime yesterday, since I'd already nearly finished the (Im)Perfect Winter Hat by the time I bought my copy. Still, it was kind of an I Told You So to read the tip about always wet-blocking gauge swatches because the gauge can change so dramatically. It hasn't with my other projects, but I haven't wet-blocked superwash wool before. Surprise!

Well, I'll know better for next time and settle for being grateful not to have had such a mishap before, when it really mattered. Frankly, I love working with Dream in Color's Cloud Jungle colorway so much (scroll down, it's a 300 series entry) I don't care how many times I have to knit the hat. Which is saying something because I am not a process knitter who lives to work stitches: normally I want results yesterday.

We're having snow again where I live and I'm kind of past being struck by it all. However, I did see this incredibly adorable pattern for a hot water bottle cover yesterday and thought h'mmmmm. I used to love tucking in with a good book and a hot water bottle, gambling that this would not be the night the rubber broke down and flooded the bed. I had such a cute Wind In The Willows-patterned cover, too. It wore through before the bottle did and after that it just wasn't the same, but I bet this cutie would be a good replacement, don't you?

1 comment:

Kathleen Taylor said...

I only wet block- steaming doesn't allow the yarn to bloom (and many yarns bloom almost alarmingly after washing). Usually, I only use superwash yarn for socks (or baby things, with sock yarn), but I do hear that machine washing some heavier superwash yarns causes them to stretch a lot too.