Twisted Loops

Since my last post, there has been swatching.  I determined that my stashed yarn was suitable for this pattern.  Before we go on, I’ll give you some background on this yarn.

The yarn selected for the sweater is Phildar Detente.  It’s an older yarn that I got at a garage sale last year.  As a knitter, this was a fabulous sale.  As I’d heard from Vanessa, the mother of the person having the sale used to own a yarn shop.  All the shop remains were in boxes in the garage.  The woman actually let me go into the garage and dig through boxes to find yarn.  I filled a box full of Phildar cotton yarns, Anny Blatt Angora, Ironstone Mohair, Brown Sheep Top of the Lamb…the list goes on (and I didn’t even get time to dig in the boxes marked superwash).  As I left the garage sale, the woman charged me $10 for the entire box.  I almost felt guilty walking away with such a large quantity of yarn for such a small price. 

Based upon that history, I’m not sure that this yarn has been stored in optimal condition over the years.  But, it doesn’t smell or seem discolored, so I wasn’t worried about it.  I wasn’t worried, that is, until I swatched.

Perhaps it’s one of those little things that we, as knitters, try to convince ourselves won’t matter.  You know what I mean, those issues during a project that we somehow always seem to rationalize.  Not getting gauge?  Don’t worry, it’ll block to the right size.  Yarn running low?  I’m sure there’s enough, if not, I’m sure the different dye lots won’t be noticeable.  There are lots of these things on projects where we convince ourselves to ignore the obvious problem.

With my swatch, it was the yarn breakage.  I knit my stockinette swatch to measure my gauge, and then I decided to swatch the lace pattern from the yoke to see how it looked.  Several rows in, the yarn broke as I put my needle into a stitch for a K2Tog.  Surely, just a fluke occurrence.  The yarn met the necessary gauge, so I cast on a sleeve and started to knit.

About an inch in, the yarn snapped again.  Since I’d started with the remainder of the ball from swatching, I decided that I was still too near the original break, and must be at a weak point of the yarn.   I kept knitting.  Several more inches in, the yarn snapped again.  Each time I undid some knitting so that I could start the new yarn.  Somehow I managed to convince myself not to worry.  This evening, everything changed.  What happened?  This happened.

It’s a hole.  Several inches back in the sleeve.  Somehow the simple motion of flipping the knitted piece back and forth managed to cause enough wear to break the yarn.  So now I’m left with a problem.  All of the knitting so far has been from the same ball of yarn.  Am I foolish enough to think that this is only a problem with this ball and all others will be fine?  Do I spend the time to redo all of my work starting with another ball of yarn (and if so, do I have enough for the sweater)?  Do I just toss the yarn and go back to the drawing board to find a new project?

I’m leaning towards tossing the yarn and heading back to the drawing board.  I just have too much fear that the rest of the yarn will be the same.  Even if it doesn’t break, if knitting is enough wear on the fabric to cause holes, it will only last on me for about five minutes before it falls apart.  Or, perhaps I’m overreacting to the whole situation.  Any ideas out there?