Friday, April 21, 2006

Not so finished after all

Technically I have two FOs. According to the patterns each is finished, but...
The hat was just about the right size when finished. Probably a loose fit, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. The yarn felt a bit harsh so
I decided to wash it to try to bring out the softness of the alpaca. Besides which I now understand these things should be washed when finished. So I ran a sink of just-off-cold water and some wool detergent, added the hat and IT GREW. It grew like the garden weeds are growing right now <your curse here>. It just took on water, turned flobby and expanded in size. Horrified, I rinsed it carefully, squeezed out the water and inspected the result: an immense hat. A huge hat, a hat suitable for, for a very large thing. Not quite the dome of St Pauls, but getting there. Argh. I rolled it up in a towel, squeezed out more moisture, shaped it tall & thin rather than short and wiiiiiiiiiide, then put it on a radiator to dry. When dry it was certainly softer, but it's probably too big. I may give it to him anyway as a joke to laugh at while I try again.

The Fleece Artist cashmere moebius cowl is also technically finished. I even did extra rounds of every bit of the pattern (bar the binding off, which would have been tricky to do more than once) and I still have lots of lovely cashmere left. What to do? I decided this morning to do what I think is the right thing: frog it back to the stockinette&yarn over section in the middle and knit in the remaining yarn, then tie in the frogged length (in which I will cleverly tie slipknots to indicate roughly where each successive section should start. I may have lost the 'start' of the, er, moebius but I don't think it matters if I have; I'll just stick a marker where I stop frogging and start knitting again. I will try to remember to post information about how many extra rows were possible.

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