What a Yarn Wants

The other day, my friend L commented, very insightfully, that wool really wants to be yarn. Introduce the slightest amount of twist, she noted, and it holds itself together like a champ and begs for more. Unlike, say, cotton, which according to L's logic wants to be just about anything but yarn (as I discovered after half an hour's utter frustration at the wheel with some otherwise-lovely cotton roving).

I'm not sure where wool/silk blends stand on the spectrum, but I have a sneaking suspicion it's just a bit more cotton-like in its desires than regular wool. I know this because I spent an ultimately happy couple of hours last night spinning up one of my SP9 pal's earliest gifts to me: a luscious 4 oz braid of Spunky Eclectic merino/silk blend in the "Vineyard" colorway.















It took some playing, I must admit. I had to tweak my Louet's ratio vs uptake for awhile until I reached a happy medium where I could introduce enough twist before the fiber got sucked from my fingers onto the bobbin. But this fiber is a true pleasure to spin. Just look at those colors! I was feeling grey and gloomy and longing for something colorful and vibrant and spring-like to spin, and I don't think I could have asked for a better choice than this. Once I have it all spun up (I've probably spun about an ounce by now), I think I'm going to Navajo-ply it, and then...well, I don't have any plans for the yarn after that, but I'm sure it will make a perfect "pet skein" until it tells me what it wants to be.

And speaking of what wants to be....

As far as I can tell, Crystal Palace cotton chenille yarn wants to be anything but a Mason-Dixon Warshcloth. First, I frogged -- a soul-crushing three times. When I finally got up the gumption to cast on again, I knitted all the way to the second-to-last row when....















That's right, the yarn snapped. Snapped! Of all the nerve. And don't ask me how this could possibly be, but the end disappeared. Completely and totally, as if it never existed to begin with. And so...I can't really finish off the center of the cloth since there's a rogue end somewhere in there just waiting to work its way out. And I absolutely refuse to frog it yet again and reuse the yarn. Clearly, this yarn just Does. Not. Like. Me.

Not that I'm taking it personally or anything. *ahem*

And even though Crystal Palace chenille may not like me, DH and Baby M certainly do. More on their most generous Valentine's Day gift to me -- and all our gifts to one another -- next.