Worcester haul

Twice in two days! Back on the horse!

I realized yesterday that I don't think I ever blogged my Worcester, Mass, yarning experience. And I'm currently using my souvenir from Worcestor to knit the Kiri shawl (pdf!). The local yarn store was Knitter's Paradise, which I enjoyed very much. It was definitely the highlight of my trip to Worcester (nuff said). They had a wide variety of stuff, and especially things that I've never seen in real life before. Peace Fleece, I think. Thrummed mitted kits. The people were very nice, and I had a lot of fun there. I bought 5 balls of Crystal Palace Kid Merino, I think in the color 5449 Kiwi. The color I really like a lot. I knew I wanted to knit a shawl with it, and settled on Kiri because I could knit until I ran out of yarn, more or less.

So far so good, except...

I frogged it.

Everyone who has ever frogged mohair was absolutely right. It's a bitch.


Notice the scissors.

The frogging actually went pretty well, except for the stitches at the beginning and ends of rows. I had knit Chart 1 and three repeats of Chart 2, found myself to be one stitch off (again) and decided that I had just made one too many mistakes. It is my first attempt at shawl knitting, and my first attempt using lace-weight mohair, so I was being pretty forgiving at first.


Doesn't it have a taunting look about it?

That little swatch looking thing is actually where the yarn broke. That part was sacrificed to the waste bin. I really only used the scissors to tease apart the scissors in a spreading, anatomy dissection-like fashion, but after it broke I said screw-it with the rest.


Fresh start.

I took the opportunity to start again, insisting on something a little closer to perfection. I am through chart 1 again now, without mistakes, unlike the first time. I also started over on size 6 needles instead of size 7. It just felt a little too sloppy on the larger size. No photos for comparison, stupid me. But this time I placed a lifeline, and will continue to do so after every satisfactorily completed repeat. Then I can count my repeats and ensure that I won't have to rip nearly so far next time to maintain my close-enough-to-perfection standard.

It was also funny, because I was listening to Cast On the whole time, and the episode when I started reknitting was the one where Today's Sweater was about ripping out a whole sweater of mohair. Ouch.

Lesson learned: Don't f*ck with the mohair.