Saturday, October 28, 2006

ow

So, in between ballband dishcloths and socks, I've been drooling over the linen handtowels in the Mason-Dixon book. When my mom asked if I would be interested in knitting something for a friend of hers in Scotland, I suggested a linen handtowel. Easy, right?

Well, first of all, my LYS doesn't carry linen yarn. So I ordered it online and it took a week or so to get here (I wasn't counting, it just felt like longer than Amazon). And it arrives looking lovely and linenny and I start rolling it into a center pull ball and...

OW. That is some stiff and scratchy stuff. I mean, REALLY stiff and scratchy. Plus when I knit up a ways



not only are my fingers chafed from the yarn rolling over them, and my wrists sore from the lack of give to the yarn, but it looks like... nothing. The stitches are so big and fat and loopy that you can hardly see the clever grid pattern. What's up, Kay and Ann? You put all those luscious linen garments and things in your book like linen yarn was something a person would actually want to work with. What's the deal? Oh, I read the bit about how it gets all drapey when it's washed (it better), but that doesn't make it any more pleasant now for the 10 remaining pattern repeats until I get this thing off the needles. Hmph.

End of grumpy linen post.

1 Comments:

Blogger amisha said...

interesting post... i've been eyeing all those linen things in mason-dixon too (i love that little slip!), but the only thing i've tried is elann's linen, which is a single-ply, not very tightly spun, and after a couple of washings it looks like a wreck (i just did a swatch before any big commitment). euroflax must be different, i kept telling myself.
i have found with other non-stretchy yarns like cotton glace that i had to go way, way down in needle size for it to look good-- don't know if that would help?

5:47 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Home