Monday, December 31, 2012

Magical knits

When I left you last, I was spinning and prepping some magical yarn, so I'm sure you're terribly anxious to hear how all that went over the weekend (or... not, because you probably did something much more fun than I did.)

Oddly, in spite of this being a magical process, I did some of the most uneven spinning I've done since I was first learning to use a spindle when I made this yarn.  Was I perhaps watching too much Lost in Austen?  And then I had to knit the neckwarmer three times before I got it right:


and it's still not entirely right, judging by the reference to 'neck brace' when I displayed it for a second opinion.

('right' would have involved looking swish enough to wear without a coat buttoned up over it, but since its primary purpose is to hug my chin and earlobes on really cold days, I am willing to take it off with my coat if it has to look dorky to do its job.)

Now, I could fix the problem by adding a second and/or third band of broken ribbing about mid-neck and leaving the clingy rib for the top for its chin-hugging function, but it does the chin-hugging spectacularly well and is overall a super soft and yummy warmer, plus I needed to be done by Sunday night, so I'm just going to let myself wear it a few times before I think further about ripping out and doing it over.

That's because I ran into a bigger problem with the hat:


See that yarn scattered around the start of it?  That's what I had left after the cowl and the hat band.  And I mean, 'all.'.  I spun all the Polwarth fiber I had left to get it, and I got out my scale and weighed it, and I knew it would take me to the crown of the hat and no farther, so I had to start thinking about contrast colours which was

SO DISTRESSING

because when I imagined the magical hat and cowl set it was pure white.  And that's the sort of thing I get more than a little caught up in.

Well, I dragged myself sadly to my basket of handspun yarn and pulled out a green and white combo I thought would look great even though it's a bamboo blend that won't be warm like the Polwarth and guess what I found in the same bag:


tra la la la la - more Polwarth that I'd spun before and duly forgotten about.  hurray! the hat was saved!

(well, that last ball of Polwarth spun up in a little lighter weight than the rest, and also a little pinker for some reason, but it's better than green bamboo, and the hat came out great.  I'll show you another day after it's dry and we've had sun for photography, because there is so much more to the magical hat and neckwarmer story.)

Happy New Year's Eve

People have so many different kinds of rituals for this day, and sometimes they change over time (like, I am SO over going out to see a late showing of a Disney movie on New Year's Eve.)

These days, I clean up my desk on New Year's Eve, by which I mean the daytime part because cleaning a desk while everybody else is blowing a paper horn under falling streamers is a pretty sad image (unless the sequel to cleaning it is using the clean space to write a Pulitzer-prize winning poem in the ten minutes that come after.)

It is going to be so great to go to sleep tonight knowing that my desk is once more clean and clear with space for me to shove unlimited amounts of unnecessary paper and scraps of fabric and yarn for, oh, two and a half weeks before it starts overflowing again.  Yay!

Programming Notes

I am taking some vacation this week - maybe one day, maybe two - and not posting here.  I mention this not because I think somebody might freak out if I'm not here rambling on about yarn like the consistent spinning of the earth depends on it, but because if I say it I might actually take some vacation this week and not post here for a day or two.  It was pretty hard not to have posted every weekday last week even though, it being Christmas, I was a little too busy to do it anyway.

Anyway I'm thinking Wednesday and Thursday, so after tomorrow I'll see you when I see you.  Meanwhile: do some good knitting today and send out the year in style!

1 comment:

UmmRania said...

Sounds pretty magical, I would notice if you didnt post for a few days!


Have fun and enjoy yourself!