Kiss My Knits!

Why are the beautiful ones so difficult to deal with? It’s like they know they’re pretty, so we’ll put up with the snarling and twisting and… wait, are we still talking about yarn?

So I decided it was about time for me to make something for myself, and I had a hank of Mango Moon sari silk in my stash. This was one of those that I picked up and put down about five times at the yarn store, because man, was it beautiful, but it was also expensive! But then, it’s hand-spun by village women in Nepal from recycled sari silk. I reckon it would be expensive. Finally I applied my rule, “if you pick it up more than three times, you’ll think about it at home until it drives you insane, so go ahead and get it.”

It comes on a big hank. I do have a ball winder at home, but I don’t have a swift. No problem, there’s always the time-honored traditional way of winding yarn into a ball from a hank, the one you’ve seen in so many cartoons. The one where you make someone sit there with a big loop of yarn on his hands while you wind it off of them. It worked fine for the Classic Elite Waterspun(the link is a slightly different version of the yarn) that I was going to pair with it, so it ought to work fine with the sari silk, right? Right?

Wrong.

The yarn had a wonderful smell of hay and animals (no, really, it was great!) when I first opened up the hank. I could really picture some woman in Nepal at her wheel, bringing together different pieces of silk. Sadly, I did not have the same ease in pulling it back apart. After three hours of making my poor husband sit with yarn around his hands, I had managed to de-tangle about half the hank onto a ball. Here’s the rest. We’ll try again on a night when he doesn’t have a paper due.

However, I did go ahead and knit a hat out of the half that did wind up. And here it is! I love it. Finally something for myself, right? Right?

Wrong again.

Literally, ONE SECOND after I’d finished putting the tassel on, my daughter saw it and said, “It’s not finished!” I said, “no, it’s finished.” She grabbed it and said, “This is a hat for Emily!” and she won’t take it off. Ah, well. Maybe someday I’ll get to keep something. 🙂

(2008 note – she did give this up pretty quckly. The hat eventually made its way to Simucon and went home with the lovely and talented GM Alnilam.)