Cropped Cardigan with Leaf Ties (a.k.a. "Leaf")

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

You win again, gravity!

I haven't blogged in a bit because I'm still camera-less. I had the bright idea to take the camera back home when I was visiting Mike...unfortunately, the camera was in Zurich with us, but the cord and charger were back in Mallorca. D'oh!

Anyway, I decided to break the silence today because I learned a lesson about knitting with laceweight yarn--something that's probably more or less universally known, but didn't concern me until it flew up and slapped me upside the head.

I'd recently started a lacy stole in Lane Borgosesia Baruffa Cashwool, by far the finest and wordiest yarn I've worked with so far, and one that proved to be as much a handful as it is a mouthful. The yarn was wound up into a neat little ball, and what did I do? I fished out the end from the center and started in.

BAD IDEA.

As it turns out, 100ish rows into the project, the ball of cashwool gives up the guts and leaves me with probably on the order of 200 yards of hopelessly tangled yarn barf. WHY didn't I start from the outside, so the ball would just spin quietly in its little ziplock baggie? Why?

After a few hours of trying to deny the inevitable, I gave up and cut off the tangle...and then spliced my work to the yarn end on the outside of the ball. I was going to simply weave in the end, but had visions of the lace unraveling when blocked. Sigh. The splice worked well, but now there's a few inches of slightly thicker yarn in the middle. Hopefully it won't be too noticeable when the thing's done.

On a lighter note, does anyone need, oh, twenty little balls of laceweight yarn for swatching?

Comments on "You win again, gravity!"

 

Blogger melissa said ... (7:25 AM) : 

oh NO! i have that same yarn to make sarcelle later this year...i will definitely learn from your mistake, if that makes you feel any better. ;)

 

Blogger Lorette said ... (7:39 AM) : 

Baruffa yarn barf. I love it. I made the same mistake with Zephyr laceweight. Instead of cutting and splicing, you can just start rewinding the ball by hand from the outside while the inside yarn end is still attached to your knitting needles. Unless of course, it's hopelessly tangled.

 

Blogger LadyLungDoc said ... (7:14 PM) : 

Eeuw! Count me as someone who will profit from your mistake as well.

 

Blogger Code Purl said ... (8:47 PM) : 

Yeah, you'd think they'd write that on the label of lace weight yarn but sometimes I think the yarn manufacturers would rather see us suffer.

 

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