ARGH!!!
I am frustrated with myself right now and angry to the point of ranting profane words all over the place.
I don’t tolerate wool well. It tears my skin up, it makes me itch, my eyes water, my nose close, etc. I don’t use anything that’s pure wool, I don’t read felting patterns, I don’t know anything about the ins and outs of taking care of wool. I don’t even buy wool sweaters. My wool pants or coats have to be fully lined and with no wool actually touching my skin.
So, when I got ketchup on my Clapotis last night, I didn’t think about proper ways to clean wool. I thought about proper ways to clean a delicate garment that was 50% silk. “Oh,” I thought, “Gentle cycle, cold water, vinegar rinse.”
And I f#$%ing felted my Clapotis. I’ve spent the last half hour trying to at least save the ladders from sticking to each other, because really — what else could it do to it? Ruin it? Not bloody likely, that’s already taken care of.
Clive may have his $100 cat bed after all.
Gauge on empty.
I didn’t have enough to do with Cozy and the socks for my brother, so I decided to go ahead and start something else. I was all set to knit Samantha (see sidebar for link) and had wonderful, beautiful yarn picked out for it. I got out my bamboo size 3 needles and my bamboo size 4 needles and prepared to start.
This is when I learned the valuable lesson that English “double knit” is not the same as U.S. “double knit” weight.
I don’t generally swatch, see. I go ahead and start and do periodic checks and measure as I go. I hate swatch knitting, and you’d think that an experience like this would cure me, but probably not.
I thought, as I went along, that the casting on seemed to be awfully long for a baby sweater. (Clue 1.) I also thought that my size 3 bamboo needles seemed about to snap sometimes with pulling the yarn through. (Clue 2) I decided to continue for a few rows because I loved the yarn in question, Debblie Bliss Cotton DK. I then pulled out the tape measure, checked a 4 inch stretch, and counted the stitches in it. That count was the big, flaming neon sign indicating that everything was off.
I got online to do my research and found The Wool Shack, an online store based in Australia. I want to tell you right now how much I love this store. I love it so much that I really am tempted to pay the international shipping and buy things from them. Their site makes so much SENSE, is so handy, and is just generally helpful … other yarn store owners, please take note for when you try to build an electronic storefront.
First I went to the yarn section and decided to see what they had listed in their “yarns by weight” search options, and I could find out what the Debbie Bliss Cotton DK gauge was. Sure enough, all I had to do was pull down the drop box to see that a UK DK is a light worsted weight US yarn. It is not a sportweight yarn, which is what the pattern calls for. If I’d been more experienced (or just had a clue), I would’ve looked at the yarn in my hands and thought, “Huh. This doesn’t feel like a sportweight yarn,” and that would be that.
So I promptly ordered another yarn. (Not from Wool Shack, but I’m thinking about it.)
I left Samantha on the needles and immediately cast on a different baby sweater so I could get out my knitting frustration with something that I KNEW would work. Another friend just had a baby boy, and I’ve given blankets to his two older sisters. (This is one of them, actually … still one of my favorite patterns and end results.)
Anyway, another reason I loved Wool Shack is because I could turn my search around to find projects knit with the Debbie Bliss Cotton DK yarn. It popped up pictures of these projects, a link to buy the book, pictures of other patterns in the books, and I was able to be comforted that all would NOT be lost. Love them, love them, love them. I have no idea what they’re like to order from, but I’ve been using them more and more just to see what’s out there for a particular yarn.
So, moral of the story: have some common sense, Erin. :)
