It’s Not Easy Knitting Green December 19, 2005 ~ 10:46 am
Posted by Julie in : Craftiness Is Next To Godliness , trackbackOr, How I Learned to Stop Stressing and Love the Mohair.
My wrist is sore from working on Rick’s Christmas present all weekend long, so I thought I would write about the knitting tribulation that came before this one. Once upon a time, waaay back in September, Regan gave me a blogger meet-up gift:
Two skeins of Artful Yarns Portrait (a mohair blend) in “The Arnolfini Marriage” colorway. I’m guessing it’s called that because the colorway is based on this portrait. It came with a snazzy little pattern for a one skein lacework scarf. I had no other ideas as to what to knit with it, so I went with that pattern. This was my first attempt with mohair as well as my first real attempt with lace (the Faroese Fuhgeddaboudit? Fuhgeddaboudit. Maybe after Christmas.). For anyone just learning to knit lace or knit with mohair, step away from the skein. Put your needles down. Lace and mohair? Not meant to go together.
I started off this project several at least twenty times. I’m not lying. First I started out with my wooden 10 1/2 needles, but the points weren’t pointy enough for knitting three stitches together, which had to be done four times in each row. So, I dropped down to my aluminum size nine needles. (Note: the pattern calls for size 10 needles, but I do not own size 10 needles and wasn’t going to get some for one lousy project.) Better, but I still fucked up enough times that I was down to three-quarters of a skein. Did I mention that mohair is practically impossible to rip back? It clings to itself like burrs to your pants. It’s like a really good “Red Rover” team, and no matter what you do, you aren’t going to break through. This made tinking (un-ravelling the stitches one by one) a pain in the arse and frogging (ripping out entire rows of knitting) practically impossible. I had to cut my losses, literally.
Finally, I got into the groove of the pattern and went happily on for about 6 inches. Then I realized I had dropped a stitch and while pursuing it down the scarf, I got entangled in a particularly vicious mohair snarl. I lost my temper and yanked, and the little tiny thread that is the core of this yarn broke. I almost cried. I looked at the skein that had been a total bitch to me, had taunted me at every step, and then I looked at its sister skein, which was sitting there completely untouched. I did what any sane knitter would do. I decided the one that had broken on me was obviously the bad seed, took a deep breath, and cast on with its sister. What, you’re laughing at me?
I was RIGHT. Take that, Bio-techs! Here is the scarf that I now call “Kermit” because of the many times I had to frog it:
Ganesh, remover of obstacles, poses with the scarf he helped.
Detail of the lace. Who’s your daddy?
The scarf is beautiful, it’s soft, it’s light and airy and sophisticated and I was actually sorry to pack it up and ship it off (it was a Christmas present), but it’s a gift that very few (actually, only knitters) would appreciate. Which is why I sent it to a knitter. I wouldn’t go through this for people who can’t tell mohair from fun fur.
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