Monday, January 29, 2007

I get distracted.

Deliberate distraction, in this case, from the fact that I have to frog all that painfully-executed star stitch on Big Star. If it were just the hole... Well, I might have spent an hour figuring out how on earth to redo that. But it's also the fact that it's pretty clear it needs a cable cast-on, not my lazy-man's long-tail. And that I wanted the contrasting-color vertical edging to be wider. So... all things considered, I'll be joining trek's Frog Party. But I need a break first, and some success.

In the meantime, I've been working on my Clapotis, and, because I really needed another item on the needles ;-) , I started a beret from some handspun Romney wool my friend Sarah got me at the Farmer's Market near her in New York. It's very 'classic' wool, slightly scratchy but very pretty colored — kind of a tweedy blue with bits of purple and red in it — so I decided a hat that wouldn't touch the skin would be best, and I found the Tweed Beret patten I'm using in an Interweave Knits (I forget which one, it's at home). I made good progress this weekend:


Almost done! But this wool is wacky. As I knit, the loose wool curls itself up into tight little twists, kind of like what you can see on the left side of this image:

You spinners out there, is this what is called putting too much twist on the wool? I also noticed a number of broken places in the yarn, though it felts together again so I'm not too worried. It interested me, though.

5 comments:

Earin Marybird said...

I was about to email you to see if you had the flu or the Frogger Sickness.

I like the blue of the Romney. It might get softer over time with use and washing.

sheep#100 said...

The blue is very pretty.

Ribbit - take a peek at the mittens today.

Perry said...

The Lana Grossa merino big that I used to make my Fetching gloves did that same twisty thing. My friend says just dangle it and let it untwist, so I thought it was the normal thing to happen when you knit.

And for the longest time I'd hear of people frogging their knits, and I just thought that meant they were making frogs as closures (or decorations, in the case of items that don't close), instead of, say, buttons or zippers. I guess it means to undo.

Anonymous said...

D'oh! I'm not Perry! I'm Bex!

April said...

I hate it when yarn does that. You should probably send it to me so it doesn't stress you out.