Good Wool for All

Musings on knitting and life.

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Location: 6 Miles from Lost City, On Clear Creek, in Oklahoma, United States

I'm a quiet soul living in the foothills of the Ozarks in rural Oklahoma. I am not of the plains - I am of the hills, valleys, water and wind.

Friday, August 11, 2006

On the needles


Ahh my first post on a knitting blog.
Currently on the needles is the Icarus Shawl from IK. (the photo was taken a week or so ago) The yarn is a hand spun, hand painted wool that I purchased from the spinner (Hummingbird Hill Farm) at the Herbal Affair, a large plant and herb festival held every spring in Sand Springs, OK. It's an odd place to purchase yarn but everything they had was sumptuous. The colors are soft blues and purples.
I weighed the skein after balling it and got 125 grams. I was using my soap making scale so I'm not sure about exactly how many yards per skein. The ten yard test was between one and two grams. My scale doesn't measure half grams. The skein could be 600+ yards or 800. Crazy. The skein wrapper was of no help since it said there were 300+ yards. I just finished the end of Chart One and have 52 grams left. I feel like I owe the spinner another $30.
Now I'm sort of shaky worrying whether I'll have enough yarn to complete the shawl. This is way too much work to not finish it or to short change the project with somthing "close" to the original yarn. It's really more of a panic than the shakes.
I thought I had finished chart one earlier this week. Then I reread the pattern. Repeat rows 19-34 before beginning Chart Two. A real let down. Then the let down moved into crankiness. Knitting angry isn't pretty - it can also be downright dangerous. Needles can fly without reference to the pattern. Stitches can be dropped. Projects can be stuffed into the bottom of the knitting bag to be forgotten after countless hours of work.
As my boyfriend said, "Don't knit angry."

2 Comments:

Blogger Patti said...

Hi Denise,

I followed you here from the Icarus Knit Along. Knitting is what helps me CONTROL angry! Knitting saps away the anger and calms me. Go ahead and knit angry - it's good for you! I, too, am sweating out whether or not I have enough yarn for my Icarus. I realized that I was slowing down because I didn't think I could finish it with the materials I had. My yarn came from a particular alpaca farm, not a commercial supplier, and I couldn't get any more. I decided to order some alpaca from Knit Picks in a related, heathery version of the rusty red I am working with. It arrives this week, wish me luck! --Patti
http://www.pattipurls.blogspot.com

4:09 PM  
Blogger Lost City Denise said...

Patti,
May you have LUCK!!!! May we both/all have luck finishing Icarus.

Oh and Patti, I must add knitting tipsy isn't pretty either for me. Socks - I can do angry or tipsy!

6:09 PM  

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