This week has been a lovely time to putter around at getting some things done, as I had all 4 of my wisdom teeth pulled on Monday. While this is a setback in some ways, in others it was a nice time to focus on some hobbies. Mostly reading this time around, but I did get to work on some sockage(thus the frustration in my previous post), and today, the day my face was most swollen, I decided to focus on this, a sweater a picked up secondhand.
Now I’m not recycling knitter, normally. In fact, this was the first time I’ve had the inkling to do so. But when I was browing the used items, I saw a good chunk of hand-knit sweaters. This one just… stuck out to me. It was so nice and clean, the wool hadn’t pilled at all, the colours looked so.. nice.
I couldn’t help but wonder if someone lovingly knit this for someone else, and that someone else wore it once, if at all. Regardless, what attracted me to it was the blue. It’s one of my favorite shades of blue, and the wool strands themselves are grey and blue, flecking together to make this realy nice slate colour. The red wasn’t too shabby, either, And there was plenty of it. I’m not one to wear ski sweaters…
So I began to frog it. Frogging Fair Isle requires a certain bit of Zen composure, but this person knew what they were doing and the weaving wasn’t too difficult to pull apart. I couldn’t help but feel a little bad as I was frogging, though.
I had pretty much convinced myself that this sweater was a by-product of the curse. That the curse had left this poor sweater to be picked up by someone who needed something warm and pretty to wear, and here I was with a full stash box, frogging it up to become a yet-to-be-completely-decided project.
But I kept going. The yarn was too nice.
Turns out I wound up with a lot more than I had bargained for, despite knowing the whole time that this was a big sack ski sweater. I wasn’t fond of the creamy white colour, so it was disposed of. The sleeves were also disposed of, and the remaining blue and red became 5 very crimped and kinked hanks.
This was very exciting, as it was the first time I’d ever done my own hanks (ghetto fabulous-like, using the back of a kitchen chair), and had to wash them. I quickly cleaned my kitchen sink to spotlessness and prepped my area for some very professional washing/drying.
Of course, living with two grown men gives little to be desired in terms if what one would call “professional” working space for their precious hobby. One does what she can.
The “wet” side. Freshly washed hank gets hung over the washing sink until it’s down to a slow drip. Then gets moved to the side with the dishcloth.
Dry-er hanks were migrated to the dishcloth on the stove. Given there were only five hanks, I may have overthought some of this process. It worked well, in that while they were getting a lot of the initial water out, a lot of the kinks had worked themselves out.
I wasn’t sure how well the washing would work out the kinks. It’s still a bit crimped, but much better. Though I greatly desire a camera that isn’t 2.0 megapixel -digital- zoom for reasons like these, you can sort of make out the blue and grey flecks in the wool, in some of these photos.
Once the hanks were all on a slow drip, I set up my even-more-professional hang-to-dry system in a nook of the closet in the spare room.
Four towels beneath them, and there they shall sit until tomorrow.
In the meantime, I’ve decided that I would like to use it to knit a vest. One of those nice vests with a cable or somesuch in it, to go underneath a plain blouse, of which I have several that would match this colour blue, lucky! Currently I’m in a debate between Alison Hansel’s Leftovers pattern (with a possibly-added argyle pattern or something otherwise professional and interesting using that deep red, which would look neat), and Amy King’s Boogie pattern (seeing as it has some lovely cables that I did say I wanted, and is knit on 6mm straights – less cost for needles than leftovers).
And yet I’m still having trouble focusing on babythings. I think first on the list will be a cute brown bunnyhat, using the SnB Nation pattern. I have a nice cotton/wool blend yarn that is a tan-brown colour, perfect for a little non-gender-specific bunny.
In fact, I might cast on for that tonight. All this yarn preparation has me itching to knit.
