Okay, today is day one of Knitting and Crochet Blog week. Today's topic is A Tale of Two Yarns. The suggestion for today's blog is to talk about two yarns and expound on what you liked (or didn't like) about them. For this I am going to tell a tale from my first year of knitting. This goes back to the year 2006 (or 2007, who can remember?) when I was looking to knit Fad Classic by Wendy Bernard using Tahki Cotton classic in a gorgeous blue color. So, I bought 6 skeins of it and brought it home. This was also during the time when all I had was a ball winder and no swift. I don't remember why I didn't have it wound at the store, but it probably had something to do with how pretty the skeins looked and besides I had the ball winder part at home - I could do this myself, right? WRONG!!! I don't believe I've ever been more wrong about something.
I recruited Mr. SpiderKate to help and this was back when he wasn't Mr. SpiderKate yet and bless his heart did he help me. It ended up being a nightmare. The yarn got all tangled (possibly it was already that way in the skein) and I spent what seemed like hours untangling it. I should have taken this as a sign for how knitting Fad Classic would go and just given up on the spot. Somehow we got all (or most of them) wound and I set on the task on gauge swatching. It shouldn't be surprising that Mr. SpiderKate bought me a swift not too long after this fiasco.
I tried gauge swatching on different needles and for different sizes, but I couldn't get my gauge to work out to match what the pattern called for and you guessed it - I never knit Fad Classic. I think that with the gauge I might have been getting, I would have had to knit an XL or something. I am not an XL. I'm a small to medium. I'm not sure, but I'm thinking now that maybe it was my inexperience with knitting that caused that one to fail. I might have also not properly understood the stitch pattern or how to determine the gauge in the stitch pattern.
And that's my story and I'm sticking to it! It wasn't quite a tale of two yarns, but a pretty good tale about one yarn. Other than the problems with the winding and gauge swatching (which aren't even problems with the yarn but with the owner of the yarn), the yarn itself is fine and the colors that the cotton classic comes in are very sharp! I'd really like to make something out of this yarn yet and maybe enough time as passed that I could give it another try.
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