Quicksilver

A Knitter With a Plan

Posted on by alexand knits

I’m organized! Totally together! I’m planning ahead, and starting earl(ier than I usually do)! I’m SUPER KNITTER!!!! Well, okay, I won’t go overboard. But, I did add all my test knits to my queue and matched almost all of them up with yarn. I dug the needles out for the first few and put them with the yarn. I’m going to knit like the wind, weave in my ends as I go, and block stuff as soon as it’s off the needles. I’m going to sew on buttons, dang it! I’m going to channel some of OrangeSmoothie’s speed knitting mojo and get the proverbial ‘er done!

Check out my queue. If you dare. No, don’t–I’m embarrassed. Okay, do it, but don’t look at any of the due dates.

I cast on for one yesterday. It’s the Lancashire Dream cardigan by Gabrielle Danskknit. Being a test, it’s not published yet, but I will share a teaser pic! I’m making the 4 yo size for the little. I decided to use the same yarns I used to make the wifey’s Quicksilver so that they can coordinate. It’s going to be really stinking cute. It’s going to have stripes in reverse stockinette on the top and non-reversed solid color stockinette on the bottom. It’s a top down raglan design.

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Click to see it on ravelry

 

You can tell I like that sort of color combination as it’s pretty similar to the mason jar cozy I made, also in the picture, at least 10+ years ago.

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Quicksilver

So far, I’m very happy with how the sweater is turning out.

In other news, I stumbled into quite the yarn haul a few days ago! I happened to see a freecycle email come through from a person who was giving away three garbage bags full of yarn. Well, if you know me at all, you know I can’t resist a bargain. What better bargain is there than free? So I sent her a response throwing my hat in the ring right away. We emailed back and forth for a bit and eventually agreed I could pick it up the next afternoon. The next afternoon, I already had plans to knit with a new friend I met on ravelry, so I took her along with me to pick up the yarn. We had a lovely conversation with the woman giving the yarn away–turns out she’s moving in a few months and is downsizing–and then took it all back to my friend’s house. We spread it all out on the floor and sorted through it. It was the most yarny fun I’ve had since the legendary Goodwill windfall of 2015! There was sock yarn, worsted yarn, bulky Lopi yarn, wool, alpaca, cotton, silk, blends…in short, a little bit of everything except straight up acrylic. It ran the gamut from very old stuff to new and nice stuff. I’ve started logging it in ravelry but it’s going to be a long job. Much of it is unlabeled so I need to make some guesses about what it might be, weight, yardage, etc. At least I don’t need to do any burn tests as the yarn giver (I think that should be her official title) didn’t include anything 100% acrylic.

It dawns on me now that I should have taken pictures of it spread out on the floor in all its glory, but I didn’t. You’ll have to make do with a smattering of stash pics! Here are some of the highlights so far:

And much, much, MUCH more! She also included several WIPs, many of which were socks. I ripped some of them out but saved a few. There’s a pair of sock toes started that I really like, so I’ll pick up the stitches on them and see if I can finish them up!

I think it’s safe to say that I have my work cut out for me. First, finish all these damn test knits! Second, find something to do with all this yarn! Happy knitting!

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WIP-less Wednesday!

Posted on by alexand knits

I have plenty of WIPs, but what I want to share with you today is an FO that I’m really excited about. So, over the summer I started knitting again after a bit of a hiatus, and it quickly became my best form of therapy. I started doing projects that pushed me as a knitter and this was really the first of those. I finished the knitting almost two months ago but didn’t get around to weaving in ends and blocking until recently.

Without further ado, here is my completed Quicksilver:

FullSizeRender 73The rundown

Pattern: Quicksilver by Melanie Berg

Yarn: Cherry Tree Hill Yarn Supersock Select Solids in hot pink, apricot and bark, total yardage=825

Size made: One size, finished measurements 38″ x 65″

Needles: US6

Modifications: None

Ravelled: Here

The pretty

FullSizeRender 71 FullSizeRender 70 FullSizeRender 69 FullSizeRender 76 FullSizeRender 74Many thanks to my mom for her excellent modelling services!

I LOVE this project. It’s for the wifey, but I hope she won’t mind if I borrow it from time to time! I followed the pattern as written. I would definitely make this again. I like the yarn all right, but it’s not my absolute favorite as it’s just a little splitty. I was worried initially that it wouldn’t be big enough but it grew a lot with blocking–from about 30″ x 53″ to about 38″ by 65″, even though I didn’t block it super aggressively.

The pattern was a little challenging at first but once I got into it, it was very straightforward. The only really tricky bit was keeping track of where to turn around for the short rows (in the mesh sections). I started using a stitch marker pretty early on and that solved that problem. It knits up quickly and, despite having a lot of garter stitch, isn’t too monotonous since the mesh panels break it up a little.

Overall, this was a great project!

Cleaning House, Knitting Style

Posted on by alexand knits

For the past couple of days, I’ve been working on wrapping up some projects I have on the needles as well as getting some UFFOs finished and blocked. I have the secret project as well as the wifey’s Quicksilver (at long last) currently blocking, both with all ends woven in. I’ve been slogging away at the Clapotis for my MIL (just started skein #6 out of 7 last night) and that shouldn’t be too hard to finish up and block once the knitting is done. I’ve been using Russian joins the whole way so I’ll just need to weave in the first and last ends and trim up the joins. That will be three projects completely done! I also picked up buttons for my garter yoke baby cardi the other day so will grit my teeth and finish that up so it can be gifted away and off my to do list. Of course, I will attempt to get good photos of all these so I can blog about them properly.

I’ve also been doing a lot of work getting yarn ready to use. Usually this isn’t something I have to deal with but…I received some yarn I’d ordered a couple of weeks ago, and the bag and everything in it reeked of cigarette smoke. While I don’t want to infringe on anyone’s personal liberties, I will say that I really can’t stand cigarettes or tobacco smoke of any kind and to have a stale smoke bomb hit me when opening a bag of otherwise really lovely yarn–yeah, total bummer. I couldn’t just throw it away because, well, malabrigo! Also, while I didn’t buy it at anything close to retail price, I still did pay for it. So I’ve started the task of washing and drying all the yarn in the bag. Of course it was six skeins of non-superwash malabrigo wool and three skeins of hand wash Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece…no superwash in the lot. I’ve washed two of the skeins of malabrigo and am a little concerned that they started to felt. I’m not sure what to do for the remaining four skeins as I was as gentle as I could be with the first two. I’m going to try to wind them into balls today as they’re finally fully dry and see how it goes. As for the cotton fleece, I’m laughing at myself for what I did. I wasn’t really thinking clearly and just submerged two of the skeins without unwinding them. That was fine for washing them as it didn’t seem like the smoke had permeated past the outer layer (I think the malabrigo was the real culprit) but it wasn’t the best plan for drying them! So I washed them, waited until they dried out enough that I could unwind them into loops, and hung them to dry.

You might be wondering where I got yarn that was smoky. I got it from DBNY, which sources their stock from stores that go out of business, overgrown personal stashes and overstock. There’s no guarantees that anything will be in perfect condition since it may not be new or it might have been stored improperly before DBNY got it. However, I did send an email to their customer service department since this was such an ordeal. I’m waiting to hear back on whether or not they will try to make it right.

So I have the rest of that batch of yarn to unskein, wash, dry, ball, photograph and log into ravelry. I also have a small batch of yarn from Goodwill that I haven’t added to ravelry yet, so I’m going to try to knock that out this afternoon. If I have time and energy, I’ll sort through some of the last random stuff from my stash–mostly stuff without ball bands that needs to be identified and added to ravelry. Then, I’ll put any newly categorized yarn away in its proper bin.

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my latest Goodwill haul

How do people store their yarn? I used to sort by fiber type, but now my stash has so many different blends that’s not really feasible. I reorganized all my yarn recently (I don’t think I blogged about that, now that I think of it) and decided to sort everything by weight. So, I have separate bins for everything (lace, fingering/sock, sport, DK, worsted, aran, bulky and super bulky). A few categories that don’t take up much space are sharing bins, and a few categories that have a ton of acrylic are further separated that way. It’s all in airtight bags inside bins with lids. I think there are eight or nine large bins, all told, and they’re all full or close to it. Time to get knitting!

Anyone else doing some fall “spring” cleaning? What’s your strategy?

Gift Knitting Sucks

Posted on by alexand knits

Okay, so it doesn’t really suck. I actually really like gift knitting. I love when ideas and yarn and pattern just click, and something cool starts emerging from the needles. I love the anticipation of finishing it and sending it off, hoping that the recipient will love it. The thing that sucks about it is that I have a project going right now that I’m really excited about it but I can’t blog about it without spoiling the surprise. I’m bottling up all my thoughts about it so after all is said and done, I can share all the details here.

In the meantime, I’m slogging away at my Clapotis. If I made this again (which I very well might) I would choose a different yarn for sure. The texture and drape of the Plymouth DK Merino Superwash is nice, and I like the color, but it has very low twist to it which makes it kind of splitty. As a result, the yarn in the dropped stitch columns just doesn’t look quite as neat as I would like. But, overall it’s pretty minor, so I think the finished product will be good. The knitting is getting a little boring but it’s at least going pretty quickly.

I haven’t blocked my Drachenfels yet but I’ve been wearing it anyway. Not surprisingly, I love it! I’ve gotten a handful of compliments on it already. The weather just turned a little cooler a few days ago so it’s been perfect for the chilly mornings. I realized that I never finished weaving in the ends of the wifey’s Quicksilver, so I’ve started working on that. I want to get that finished and blocked soon so that she can get some use out of it! I’m about halfway done. It’s super tedious.

IMG_3953Somebody thinks he’s helping:

IMG_3957 IMG_3956That one is not usually a lap cat, so that was a nice treat. Shockingly, he only chased the yarn once or twice.

Here’s what I have in mind for my next few projects:

image_medium1Fun, right?

Might as Well Use Malabrigo…

Posted on by alexand knits

I was stuck in project limbo for about two whole days. When you’re off work, that is an extremely long time! I spent my time in limbo researching patterns and techniques, swatching, stashing yarn on Ravelry, and (drum roll) sewing in the ends on my Old Shale blanket! I want to give it a light blocking but right now I don’t have anywhere to do it. We’re in the middle of going through all our stuff, culling, and reorganizing, and the guest bed is…very much buried. That’s the only space that’s really safe from the cats. But, at least I bit the bullet and did the really tedious part.

I did some research on effectively weaving in ends on superwash yarn. There’s lots of resources out there, but I didn’t come up with any options that I really love. TECHknitter shows how to “skim in” the ends, but it seems to me that method would be hard/impossible to do invisibly. The project in question is my Quicksilver shawl and, even though there is a wrong side and a right side, I want the wrong side to look as tidy as possible since it may well be visible when worn. Otherwise, options I found were using duplicate stitch, darning in the ends, hand sewing them, and tying outright knots. To be fair, the knot method is demonstrated for cotton, but there’s no way I’m tying knots on my awesome shawl. Duplicate stitch just doesn’t seem secure enough, darning the ends would be too visible, and sewing them in? Probably not happening (again) any time soon. So, I will probably go the TECHknitter route and see how it looks. I will need to find somewhere to buy a knitpicker.

So, after all that, I still needed a new project on the needles. So, I started swatching for the test knit I signed up to do. I don’t think it’s a secret as the author posted the pattern photos and a call for testers on her blog, so it’s the River District Toque from welfordpurls. I had already picked out a yarn from my stash based on weight, fiber, yardage and color, so I pulled that out and tried it out. You know how sometimes you know something isn’t quite right, but you just don’t admit it? That was the case here. The yarn I had planned to use was Husky by Ellyn Cooper’s Yarn Sonnets. Ravelry says it’s worsted weight, so that must be right…right? Not like it’s called “Husky” or anything. Or like the label recommends a US 10 needle. Or like it looks about twice the size of any other worsted weight yarn I’ve ever seen. Nope, I didn’t let any of that sway me–I cast on for a gauge swatch. Shocking that it didn’t work out at all, isn’t it? So, back to the stash I went, and the only really appropriate thing I could come up with was my new malabrigo Rios. I swatched, found the right needle size, and cast on. After a few snags, I figured some stuff out and ended up with this:

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It’s so squishy and lovely. Ignore the blue cotton provisional cast on. The picture does not begin to do the yarn justice. It’s about the softest thing possible and I love the way the dye looks. It’s almost like the dye didn’t all penetrate the fiber completely so there’s a luminous quality to it. Probably someone who knows something about dyeing could explain it better, but for now I’m happy to just be in awe of it. Here’s a better look at the cables:

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The color in that photo is much more accurate. I love it so much that I’m going to try to keep the finished product for myself! It’s doing a little bit of flashing so far, but not so much that I don’t like it. If it gets more pronounced, I’ll consider restarting and using two skeins. For now, so far, so good!

Project Limbo

Posted on by alexand knits

I’m at a frustrating point between projects. None of the UFFOs are getting finished, and nothing new is really coalescing. I have one dishcloth on the needles that I actually had to frog and restart. I’m not a completely perfectionist knitter, but I try not to leave mistakes that I am aware of or make really obvious fudges. However, my tolerance of dishcloth errors is pretty high, particularly in this case: I don’t love the yarn, so I’m not going to gift it to anyone. I just want it to be knitted into a functional item. But, when tightening the grafting on the two edges, I must have pulled on a YO instead of on the graft. The whole thing got completely out of whack, and I ended up just pulling it out. In retrospect, I realize what I must have done. One mod I made to the Cherry Pie Washcloth pattern was to use a crochet chain cast on. Well, I usually would knit the first row after the cast on to make sure there was a solid row of stitches to work off, but I must have forgotten that this time. I restarted it yesterday and hopefully this time it will go better!

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One cool thing about restarting it yesterday was that I remembered the cast on without having to look it up, and was able to knock it out really quickly. Also, I’m attempting a Russian join for the first time. Since I’m not giving the dishcloth away, I’ll be able to see how well it wears over time.

I cast off Quicksilver the other day, but haven’t started weaving in ends yet. I want to do further research on that before I start. It may sound silly–I’ve woven in hundreds of ends on many different types of fibers–but I realized I don’t think I’ve woven in sock weight merino superwash ends before, and certainly not on a project of this scope. I really want it to be a completely secure and invisible finishing job, so I want to learn a little more about it. Basically, part of me just doesn’t believe that superwash ends will stay where I put them!

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I started sewing in the ends for my Old Shale blanket, but that is proving to be a monumental undertaking. I should probably put some time in on that.

I cast on for a new project last night, but I am going to pull it out. I’ve had my eye on Rivulet for a while and I have enough Noro Haniwa in my stash to make the medium width. So, I cast on 56 stitches and worked a few rows in 1×1 rib. For this pattern, ALL stitches are worked through the back loops. For knit stitches, no big deal–doesn’t take but an instant longer than a regular knit stitch. But for purl stitches? That was taking forever. I stuck with it for four or five rows, though, then started looking at the work with a more realistic eye. I didn’t swatch because typically a scarf’s gauge isn’t all that crucial. In this case, a scarf that was supposed to be about 8″ wide was easily 12″ and could stretch to 14″ in a pinch. So, I will be pulling that out and rethinking. It would probably look lovely, but would be out of proportion and I would run out of yarn at about 3′ long!

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A 14″ needle is included for scale!

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The yarn is so pretty. I can’t get the greens to show up right in the pics. they actually have a much more emerald shade.

I would still like to make that scarf, but don’t have the yardage required in another yarn. I don’t think it’s reasonable to go down several needle sizes to get gauge and still use the Haniwa–the fabric would end up being way too dense. That yarn was not meant to be crowded like that. I have another reversible cable scarf pattern that also calls for aran weight yarn, so I may try that. It’s the His/Hers Reversible Scarf in Cables Untangled: An Exploration of Cable Knitting by Melissa Leapman. I’ve used that pattern before and really liked it. If that doesn’t work out, I will have to go back to the drawing board completely. Or, I could start my test knit!

I do have one other thing percolating, but I don’t have the right yarn in my stash to start yet. I won a free pattern from Melanie Berg a couple of days ago (she designed the Quicksilver shawl). I posted on the weekly topic thread and got chosen at random! I chose Drachenfels, a pattern I had my eye on anyway. Pretty cool, right?

Quicksilver: a New UFFO and a Blast from the Past

Posted on by alexand knits

I just cast off my Quicksilver! I have to weave in ends now and block. I am hoping that it grows a good bit with blocking as I’d like it to be larger. Other than that, I love it. I will get the wifey to take better pictures of it in the daylight tomorrow. For now, here’s what I have:

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Not bad for a first real shawl attempt! More pics and some of my project notes can be found here. I learned a few very valuable lessons on this project. They all pretty much come down to this one: be careful knitting while annoyed at your toddler. Over the past couple of days I’ve had somewhat limited time to knit and twice I was set back by errors I didn’t have to make. Both times I was in the midst of a disagreement with my daughter about cleaning up toys. Once, on the next to last stripe section, I randomly inserted a YO that didn’t belong. No way (that I know of) to fix that without tinking back, so that’s what I did for about three rows. Then, on the last mesh section, I managed to drop a stitch. I caught it and tried to repair it, but I couldn’t get it to look quite right so ended up tinking back another couple of rows. Now, there are no errors that I’m aware of, so I’m planning on getting some blocking wires of some sort and finishing it up.

So, I don’t really have anything on the needles currently. I guess there’s one small thing–another Cherry Pie Dishcloth–but I just cast that on to use up some yarn and to be a more portable project. It’s a little over a third of the way done:

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It’s really a darker blue than it looks in the pic. I guess it should be a Blueberry Pie Dishcloth instead!

I read this amazing story on Ravelry about a knitter who often finds yarn at thrift stores in her area. She recently found close to a dozen full skeins of madelinetosh yarn for less than $3 each. So, I was inspired to go to a thrift store near where I live that I’d never gone to before, just to poke around and see what was there. I found a few skeins of yarn, but it was all acrylic. I bought them anyway as they were really cheap and would be fine for some cool decor patterns I have on deck. I also found at least a few yards of some wonderfully hideous material:

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The amazing thing about this is that my mom made two comforters out of this same print for my brothers, probably before I was born. The other side of each comforter had an animal print on it. I remember those comforters from when I was a kid, so when I saw this pattern I almost couldn’t believe it. I have no idea what I’m going to do with it yet, but it absolutely had to come home with me despite the wifey’s protests. I love it!

Hopefully soon I will have before and after blocking pics to post!

Moving Forward–Quicksilver, Lovely New Yarn and Test Knitting

Posted on by alexand knits

I am still plugging away at my Quicksilver. I have two mesh sections and one garter stitch section to go, and then it will join my collection of UFFOs (see this post for an explanation). I am hoping it will not stay there long as I’m very excited to see how it will transform once blocked. I’ve been looking at this brilliant thread on Ravelry and so am very excited about the blocking process. This project should benefit particularly because, even though the mesh isn’t really what I’d think of as “lace”, it’s still got a lot of stretch to it. And, the striped sections are in garter stitch, so there’s a lot of room to grow there. I’m hoping it will expand in size quite a bit!

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I revisited another skill that I’ve used in the past but not for a long while: dropping a stitch on purpose to fix an error in a previous row. I made it maybe ten rows without realizing I somehow purled one random stitch in a striped section. So, when I got to that spot, I dropped the stitch above it off the needle, pulled it out until I got to the purl stitch, and reworked up the ladders. It got a little fiddly and took a long time, but I know that it would have otherwise bothered me forever. So, I consider it time well spent. Also, it’s good experience!

I discussed in Quicksilver and the Importance of Good Knitting Needles how I was going to transition my shawl onto a longer pair of circs. Well, that didn’t end up working out. It was great to see the work spread out instead of completely scrunched up, but my gauge with the other needles was much looser. Even though the needles were the same size! I guess there was something about the texture that cause me to knit looser. So, I crammed it all back on the shorter ones. If I have a chance to buy another circ before I finish the shawl, I will…but it’s looking like that might not happen.

Other knitting news: I will be doing my first test knit! I’m really excited about it. More on that later! Also, I actually started sewing the ends in on my Old Shale kids blanket yesterday. That will be slow work but is necessary and totally worth it.

Yarn news: I got my hands on my very first Madelinetosh yarn yesterday. It is very, very pretty and I love it. I also got a couple of skeins of Malabrigo (not my first on that one, but only my second) which is also downright beautiful. You can see them both in my stash if you like. They are both squooshy and delicious and I want to knit them right away and save them forever, at the same time. Hopefully for my storage space, the knitting will win.

I can’t help sharing a glimpse here:

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One aspect of depression (remember that? depression?) for me has always been procrastination. One great way I’ve found to procrastinate is to become thoroughly engrossed in something else. Well, sometimes knitting becomes that “something else”, as knitters everywhere will be shocked to learn. I have (had) several very important things to do for work and the deadline for many of them happens to be today. Over the past few weeks, I have done a good bit of knitting, but have not worked on these things at all. I am proud to report that I spent a good bit of this morning doing all those things due today. I took a break to knit a little and have some lunch…and maybe write this blog entry…and am determined to get back to work afterward and knock out the last outstanding thing that needs done. And then maybe do some more knitting!

Quicksilver and the Importance of Good Knitting Needles

Posted on by alexand knits

I’m making very good progress on my Quicksilver. I never thought I’d say this, but I can’t wait to block it. I have it crammed on a very short circular needle right now, so I can’t get a sense of what its completed size will be, and I want to see the mesh sections open up and bloom a bit.

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No major hitches, but there were a couple more instances when I dropped a stitch and had to do a little tinking and a little detective work to fix it. Then, I thought I’d dropped a stitch, so went through the process of fixing it…only to realize that I had done it right in the first place. So I went back and fixed my fix. That might have been annoying, but tinking back and really looking at the structure of knitting has been the best way over the years for me to begin to get a better sense of how the stitches work together to create a fabric, and what tension in one area does to the rest. Like any good engineer, I have to take something apart and put it back together in order to fully understand it.

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I have it crammed onto a shorter needle because my next longest needle in that size is some ancient plastic creation that I’m not thrilled about working with. The one I have it one now is an Addi lace circular. I like that much better than the ancient plastic one, but I’m finding it’s not the ideal needle I thought it would be. I bought it recently because I needed one in that size. I would probably have gotten the regular Addis but the person at the store told me about the lace tips. For those not in the know, Addi Turbos are notoriously sleek, slick and quick needles that knitters tend to either love or hate. I love them. I thought it would be awesome to have that same slick needle with a lace tip–i.e., longer/more tapered and pointier; designed for quickly and easily knitting through tiny lace stitches*. However, I didn’t realize at that time that the Addi lace needles do NOT have the same coating that the Turbos do. They are brass instead of nickel and are more grippy than I really want.

So, I’ve done some research on Addis lately, and determined that I want Addi Rockets or Sock Rockets. Same slick finish, same long pointy tip. I think ultimately I want to get an Addi click set (interchangeable needles and cables) with the long Lace tips. In this case, “long” refers to the overall needle length, not the length of the tip. I want the longer needles because I have large hands that tend to fall off the back ends of the shorter ones. It would be convenient to have the shorter ones for some projects (since they don’t contribute extra length to the cable) but I have a few fixed ones that would serve for that. So, on my unofficial wish list they go!

In the meantime, I think it’s time to move to the longer needles…

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I tried stretching them out to get a picture of them that way, but they snapped right back into the above position!

*I am not really a lace knitter to any great extent, but I like the longer and pointier tips because I do tend to knit a little tightly.

UFFOs (Unfinished Finished Objects)

Posted on by alexand knits

I have four recent projects that are off the needles but awaiting finishing. There’s also a few very old ones waiting around in the background…I’m thinking a finishing blitz is in need.

But, pending that, I have something new on the needles. I’ve been off work all week so I’ve gotten a lot of knitting time in. I cast on for Quicksilver using Cherry Tree Hill Supersock Select in Bark, Apricot and Hot Pink. For the first several rows, I wasn’t quite sure of the color combo, but it’s growing on me. I initially thought there was two much contrast between the browns. I wish the bark was a little closer to milk chocolate (mmm) and the apricot a little closer to camel, but I think it’s going to turn out well.

Uhh, not sure why those pics are ginormous, but you get the point. Here’s the current state of the project:

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I’m attempting to follow the pattern pretty closely (with the exception of swatching…didn’t do that this time around, but that’s a whole nother post). The only thing I’ve done differently is to carry the yarn up the side for the striped sections. Someone asked about that in the Ravelry forums as the pattern doesn’t specify, and the designer answered that she and the test knitters had pretty much all broken the yarn between stripes. There is no way I will ever weave in that many ends. This would remain an UFFO forever instead.

This pattern isn’t particularly difficult from a technical standpoint, but you do have to pay very close attention to where you are and what your stitch count is. I had one or two things I had to tink back a little to fix (once because I didn’t read the directions closely enough) but nothing major. I had to refresh my memory on how to do a long tail cast on but that’s not a big deal. It includes some short rows but no special techniques are needed to do them, so it’s as easy as turning the work and knitting back across.

I like the yarn well enough, but it’s not going to be my new go-to or anything. Some of the reviews on Ravelry weren’t great. People commented on large numbers of knots per skein and excessive fuzzing/pilling after the yarn had been worked with a little bit. I didn’t encounter any knots at all, but have noticed a little bit of extra fuzz. It is fairly soft and squooshy, so I’ll definitely use up what I have.

With only one project on the needles, I don’t have a ton else to report. I’ve of course been sick on my week off, which just figures. I will leave you with a little dose of cuteness:

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That’s Sammy, one of our stripeys, loving on my daughter’s platypus.