Whoosh!

It seems to be fast-knits week here at Chez V, perhaps to make up for last week's froggin' misery.

Pea Pod is seaming — pictures later. Last night I was too tired to seam, so — bad me. I started a new sweater. Look how far I got in one night!



Those big cones of Webs closeout yarn seemed to bring a lot of you lurkers out... right when I was off-blog for almost a week. This was because I kept forgetting to bring my CD card home. (And then I did write a long post and my browser crashed, and I didn't rewrite it.) Anyway, this is the start of Sienna from Interweave Knits:



with the Webs yarn.

Sienna really wants a cushy merino with lots of squash and body — Sundara's worsted merino would be fab for it, for example. But I can't afford to spend $180 on just one sweater right now, and also I thought it would be interesting to see what a rougher, less even-stitch yarn would do in this style. Plus, I need a brown cardi!

So this yarn isn't suited to this project, but it's not as bad as it looks. The raw yarn has a weird feel — almost waxy, very stiff. But wash it and it fluffs up, fulls out, gets soft. Here's an overlay of my washed swatch on last night's stockinette:


Color is all wrong, it's a very warm golden brown.
Interesting, no? Surely worth $20 for a sweater!