Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Catastrophe and Joy. Unrelated.

My darlings,

Something terrible happened this weekend.  I reached a point on my shawl where I thought it would be a good idea to have the second skein of yarn wound up and ready to go.  My new ball winder needs an adjustment, so I took it with me to my local shop to see if I could use their set up until mine is back in good working order.  Not very far into the winding the yarn broke.  Or we thought it broke.  On closer inspection, it looked like the yarn was cut.  After severl more cuts we started looking at the skein more closely and found more cut ends.  In short, this skein was shredded.  It took 3 intrepid knitters 5 hours to get it all untangled and wound up.  It was a nightmare because I didn't know precisely how much of that mangled mess I was going to need to finish my shawl, and this yarn is discontinued, so there is no more to be had (I checked).  I suspect someone along this skein's journey from manufacturer to me used a box cutter in an irresponsible fashion.  This is what it looks like now.
There is some good news in there.  In my spreadsheet madness with this shawl, I weighed the remaining ball of yarn at several points along the way.  This information let me do some fancy math to determine that I will need all three of the bigger balls, but only a handful of the smaller ones to finish this.  I was really nervous that I wouldn't have enough at all, or that there was going to be so much splicing that I was going to hate it forever.

On a much better note, my step-daughter has become a knitter!  And not just a knitter, but a knitter of lace.  Behold her first finished shawl.
She texted me these pictures this morning, and I couldn't be more proud.  I can't wait for her to come over this weekend so we can block this baby and see it in all its glory.  The pattern is Maia Shoulderette and the yarn is Wollmeise.
Now, if only she had a project page on Ravelry so we could all go make comments on what a great job she did! HINT HINT!

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