A month or two ago, I found some lovely handspun wool for sale at etsy.com, and when it came, the spinner also included a photo of the sheep who had produced it!
This is a sheep named April, who lives at Grand View Farm in Vermont, and whose owner spun a lovely earthy natural colored 2-ply from her fleece and sold it to me!
(http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=11790)
So I debated for a while what to do with it and finally decided that it was just the right amount for a handy little bag to take on walks to hold keys and some cash or whatever.
So I cast on 56 stitches and knit in the round on size 9 needles till it was about the right length. So far so good. But then I wanted i-cord for the strap and a fold-over flap. But did I have enough left? Kristen and I started on opposite ends of the same skein and she knit i-cord while I knit the flap. When the cord was the right length, I knew how much I had left, and bound off with literally 2 " of yarn leftover. Kristen sewed in the i-cord tightly, and we took a look at the end product, and well...it was wrong! The flap was too short and I had managed to put some stockinette into what was supposed to be garter stitch! (How the heck did that happen!) Plus, the edging of the inside was supposed to have been garter stitch done in the round, but by mistake I had done reverse stockinette, and it didn't behave all nice and firm like garter stitch would have done.
So after knitting in haste, I had time to repent at leisure, and decided to do it over. It took an hour to pick out the stitches that held the i-cord in place and to undo the cast-off. And then I tried again, this time decreasing to a triangular flap. I had to re-do parts of that a few times too, but in the end, success! (though Kristen thinks the flap looks disturbingly like a thong, but we won't go there. The idea of this very wooly wool as a thong is too horrible to contemplate!)
Now back to the regularly scheduled lace knitting! The thing is, I want a simple mindless project to alternate with the attention-needing lace, but as soon as I start a mindless project, I spend all my time on it till it's done, and then all I have left to knit is lace!
2 comments:
I love the idea of seeing the animal that you are wearing!!! That is so cool!
Oh! I LOVE it! April would be honored to know that you have some of HER wool knit into such a lovely bag. It appears as though it is well worth the effort you put into it. Thank you for supporting our family fiber farm!
Warm Regards,
Kim at VT Grand View Farm and April the provider of your wool yarn
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