Knit Happens

You might think that, but I’m not.  Right now I’m knitting Hannah Fettig’s Featherweight Cardigan (Rav link) and the large size (a 43″ bust) calls for just 1410 yards of a laceweight yarn.  I know, amazing, right?

I’m using Filatura di Crosa’s Centolavaggi yarn in Ruby.  Gorgeous, no?  (That picture really doesn’t do the red justice.)  I know, I know, y’all are saying “But Holly, the Centolavaggi has 1531 yards – and is less than $40.  The math doesn’t add up.”  (Wait, y’all weren’t asking?  Humor me.)  Well, you’d be right – the math doesn’t add up for just one skein, but does if I’m doubling the yarn.  The Centolavaggi is ever so much lighter than a laceweight and I thought it wouldn’t make too much of a difference when swatched, but I just didn’t like the fabric I was getting.  (See, another reason to swatch!  Just sayin’.)  So, after discussing it with Carol and Rachelle, I decided to double the yarn.  LOVE the fabric now – and am still hitting gauge.

This is going to be an ideal, lightweight cardi for year-round use.  You know how I love those…  It’ll be really helpful here at the shop this summer while I’ve got the A/C blasting, or on a cool evening out (we get those occasionally).  It’s lots of stockinette stitch, which can get a little boring, but the thought of having this in my wardrobe is keeping me going.  Who wants to knit one along me?

The pattern is available for $4.95 on Ravelry or at Hannah’s website.

(Photo from Hannah’s Flickrstream for the Featherweight Cardigan.)

Ahhh, the age old question of which to get first if you can only get one: do I get a ball winder or a swift?  At Late Night Knitting this past Wednesday, we might have come up with the answer.  (Well, it’s always been my answer, but it convinced one of our customers!)

Arabella had picked up the last of the Araucania Lonco from the clearance bin – the Lonco is a gorgeous mercerized fingering weight cotton with amazing stitch definition, but it’s a bit of a b!#&% to wind.  I am convinced that drunken monkeys were hired to reskein up the yarn once it was dyed.  In almost every skein that I’ve wound, there has been an extra twist put into the hank, making it a tangle.  I gave Arabella some warning about it (probably not enough) and she was off winding.

Fast forward an hour: she’s got 5 ends to the yarn and she’s about ready to quit winding and just cut her losses and run. Bolstered by my fourth (very small) cup of wine, I tell her that we’re not going to cut the yarn, that we can save it.  Fast forward another hour or hour and a half: it’s after 9pm, we’re still hand-winding the yarn into 3 different balls, just trying to find the end that’s attached to the ball on the ball winder.  The entire time, we’re cracking jokes about the mutating ends of yarn and how we’re lucky we’ve got the swift because neither of us know anyone who’d be willing to hold the yarn for that long!  I offer to wind the rest of the skeins for her before Knit ‘n Nosh, so she doesn’t have to deal with it, besides, I’ve had decent luck with getting the Lonco wound before, right?

The next day, I spent another three hours with a tangled mess of yarn – the drunken monkeys have been at it again.  However, the next few skeins weren’t bad at all.  (Apparently, the drunken monkeys only work on about half of the dyelots.)  Yesterday I handed it all back to her, wound of course, and she told me that I had convinced her that she needed to get a swift to have at home. 

I got a ball winder about a year before I splurged on a swift and it was a huge pain in the rear to get anything wound into balls – I had to have someone standing right there holding my hank of yarn while I wound it, or laid it on the ground and wound slowly – not good when there are pets around…  Once I got my swift, life was a lot easier.  I could hand-wind or use the ball winder – and my yarn was (relatively) safe from my cats (who love to think of it as theirs).

So, weighing in on this debate, I’m going with get a swift first if you can’t get both.  However, if you can get both (or are dropping very last minute Mother’s Day hints to husbands and children) you can save 15% off of the set!