Twisted Loops

While I was fairly certain the yarn was doomed, I decided that the yarn deserved some sort of test before I tossed it out.  I wasn’t sure I had it in me to face knitting with it.  Instead, I decided to rewind the yarn with the ball winder.  It would put some stress on the yarn, but it would not normally be enough to break it.

As I wound the first ball of yarn, I made it nearly halfway through before the snapped.  I stopped, pulled the ball off the winder and started again.  I made it all the way through without any more yarn breaking.  Perhaps, I thought to myself, the yarn will be ok after all.  Not wanting to judge by just this ball, I decided to wind a few more. 

On the second ball, the yarn snapped very soon into winding the ball.  I continued as before, removing the yarn from the winder and starting a new ball.  In the end, this ball of yarn snapped four times.  But, I’d decided to test three balls.  As I picked up the last ball of yarn, deep down in my heart, I already knew that it was doomed.  When the yarn snapped early in the winding, I gave it.  It just wasn’t worth it.  The yarn has been tossed.

I sulked for about a day.  I just couldn’t believe that the yarn I wanted to use was such a disaster.  After that, it was back to stash research to see if anything else would work for this sweater.  I’d really become set on knitting this project.  There were two remaining stash yarns that would work, based upon gauge and yardage.  First up was the Jaeger Luxury Tweed, pictured below.

I was a bit concerned about the marled color of the yarn.  Would it overwhelm the patterning in the sweater?  I wasn’t sold on the fact that this was the appropriate yarn for the pattern.  The other yarn that fit based upon weight and yardage was the Baruffa Merinos Sei.  This is a yarn I purchased in April.  It’s a beautiful, smooshy, super-soft wool.  I thought that it would be much more appropriate for the pattern. 

I cast on for the swatches.  For some reason, this has been very slow knitting.  I began knitting the first swatch using my Addis at KTog on Thursday night.  The swatch didn’t get finished there because I spend too much time looking at other projects and yarns (and talking).  I finally finished it Saturday night, and noticed that the gauge was off.  I decided to knit additional swatches with other needles. 

Last night, while watching baseball, I finished the additional two swatches using both my bamboo and Denise needles.  I washed the three swatches, and they’re currently drying on a towel.  With all of the problems that I’ve had to date, I’m not willing to risk a post-blocking gauge change that causes the sweater not to fit.  By tonight, the swatches should be dry, and I can measure the post-blocking gauge.