forgetgutenberg

Yeah, that’s me. Maybe I should become the All-Inclusive Fiber Harlot. It just doesn’t have the ring of Yarn Harlot, though, so I won’t.

In the interest of having one more thing to do with fiber, I pulled out the Weavette. Which, um, I haven’t really used, oh, at all.

I was right – there are some sock yarns that really want to be woven. The purple and green (which matches the socks I’m wearing) makes a very nice plaid.

The square on top is the evil soysilk handspun that I’d been pointedly ignoring, since I had no idea what I was going to knit with it. Well. It works pretty well as a woven thing, I think. Which solves my what to do with strange yarn problem. Who knew?

Now I have this strange urge to do something with water-soluble interfacing. Fortunately, I can’t think of anywhere to get something like that at this hour of the night. Maybe I’ll have come to my senses in the morning.

So this afternoon, I posted pictures of a shawl. (Did you see the shawl?) It was, to be frank, sopping wet and pinned out on the living room floor.

I went out to register to vote (because I am virtupus, and because I’d like to be able to rant and rail against the government for the next four years, and I feel obligated to try a little first), was successful, and realized (with a bit of help from my favorite bad-idea cohort) that in fact a hairdryer, judiciously applied, would speed the blocking up. A lot. Enough, in fact, to take my shawl to hear the Yarn Harlot.

(I don’t think anybody saw her; the entire room was knitting. I’m shocked, I tell you. The shawl-in-progress down the row from us was gorgeous.)

Great idea. Not only did I convince my housemate (and company) that I’m even weirder than they thought I was, I got to take a genuinely spectacular (seriously, it’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever knit) finished object to the one place it was most likely to get great reactions.

My favorite was the “What yarn is that?” It’s handspun. I spun that. And then I made this awesome thing out of it.

(There was oohing and aaahing from complete strangers. It was fantastic. I did not wait around in line to get a picture of the Harlot with it. I need to take a picture of it that isn’t blurry, though, so I can show the internet.)

She’s entertaining, and she’s never going to look at a room full of people knitting and think they’re not paying attention to her. Also, she has some incredibly smart things to say about knitting, and craft, and being a real writer. She’s not too short. I’m really glad I took my shawl to hear her talk.

Really. All right, maybe not. Maybe listening to Lucy was actually what I did right – it often is. Suffice it to say that I have cast off the second Adamas shawl, with a tiny ball of yarn leftover (at least I’ll be able to fix holes in it with matching yarn), and then … then! Something strange happened! I sewed in the ends! I dunked it in warmish water! (It really wasn’t exciting enough to warrant all this punctuation.) And you guessed it, I blocked it.

It’s still really, really wet, so I won’t be able to wear it tonight, but I’m sure the Yarn Harlot will understand.

Maybe she’d think I should wear it anyway.

It’s going to be serious lace when it grows up:

That’s a twelve-inch ruler along the center line, for scale. There’s hope for this one. (I’m dreading my first shawl’s blocking experience even more; it’s circular, and about four feet across without stretching. I might get around to it one day, though, if the improvement in definition of the lace pattern on this one is any indication.)