lotus blossom and hempathy

I started the Lotus Blossom tank from last summer's Interweave Knits last weekend. It actually started with me making an enormous mistake. I got out the hank of linen and thought, "well, since I can't use my ball winder to wind this I might as well not get the swift out either, I'll just wind it off the hank." I sat down on the couch, laid the hank in my lap and started. Yes, laid the hank in my lap. Yes, I'm an idiot. The result was what Anabel called a "yarn monster."

a cautionary tale

I am posting this on my blog for two reasons: 1) to warn anyone else not to do this and 2) so that you all will remind me not to do it again. This is the second time I made a mess like this. The first time was right after I started knitting, almost five years ago, and I didn't actually own a swift. This time, I have no excuse. The first time the yarn was wool and Erik ended up being the one to untangle it. The linen is much easier to untangle, I have to say. Lucky for me, Anabel is intrigued by puzzles like this and took it upon herself to finish most of the untangle for me at last week's BobaKnit. Thank goodness!

That done, I swatched, washed the swatch and cast on for Lotus Blossom. I thought I twisted my stitches, though, and was knitting a moebius when I wanted a tank.

my mistaken mistake

It's hard to tell if your stitches are twisted when you have 260 stitches on a 24-inch circular, I've decided. Of course, I didn't discover that I was indeed not twisted until I had pulled the needles out to rip back. The smarter idea would have been to slip the stitches on the 47-inch circular that I was supposed to start using at row nine. Ah well. I managed to get everything back on the needle and have made decent progress in the past week. I'm starting to feel the groove of this pattern.

One and a half repeats

In other news, I found Hempathy. Hempathy is a hemp/cotton/modal blend. It's soft for a hemp yarn and very pretty. I bought it on vacation in Pacific Grove at Monarch Knitting. This was my kind of store. They have a gorgeous husky as their shop dog and a cute little bird (parrot?). I was wearing my Rogue and looking at the yarn and one of the women who works there, possibly the owner, came over and said, "Ooo, did you make your sweater?" I said I did. She gave me the knitter's handshake (she rubbed the hem of the sleeve) and said, "Lavold?" I said no, she said, "Interweave?" I told her it was Rogue from Girl from Auntie and then she said, "Oh! You put in bust darts! You're a Knitter." (You could hear the capitol K on Knitter.) At that point the shop dog came over and licked my hand. I commented that the dog decided she could greet me now and she said, "yes, she only licks the real knitters."

It was highly entertaining. After all that I wasn't going to buy the Hempathy, even though I've been looking everywhere for it. My mother, however, pointed out that I had been looking for it, it was a great color and I didn't know if I'd find it again. My mother is an enabler! Ah well, at least I got a sweater's worth of some nice yarn out of it. Now I just need to figure out what to knit.

Hempathy

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