Loxosceles

My training is going well. To practice long hours of daunting knitting, I am working on my Aran sweater, which features charts stolen from St. Brigid. It is beautiful, and I think I will actually finish it (someday). I now have 3 complete repeats of the pattern done, on the front of the sweater. It is in Galway Highland Heathers. I'm thinking I'll do a square neck, seam the pieces together in what Alice Starmore insists is the traditional Aran construction, and if the body isn't wide enough, I'll make a little moss stitch panel that I can insert along the sides of the body.

Somebody made these crazy buttons for the Olympics. I wasn't sure there would be a button for me, but I was heartened to see that there is both a Drunk Lace Team and a Sober Lace Team.

So, I'm on the Freekin' Steekin' team. Since I like to knit in the round, and since I have actual Shetland wool to work with, I am going to cut my first steeks! That's actually the part of the project I'm most looking forward to. NON-KNITTERS: wondering what a steek is? It's when you brutally chop up a piece of perfectly good knitting with scissors. Say, for armholes. It is a barbaric and cruel practice. However, using Shetland wool makes it a little less barbaric, because Shetland wool is, for some reason, loath to unravel. (When the Norwegians do steeks, they machine-sew on both sides, since their sheep don't given them Shetland wool).

I bought an ordinary-looking sweater at the Salvation Army because it was wool. What caught my eye, out of all the wool sweaters there (and there were several) was the label: "Shetland 100% wool". I didn't understand. Was that the same thing as 100% shetland wool? For $3, I figured it was worth a try.

Shetland wool, judging from the skeins I'd seen at the Local Yarn Shop, has a particular rough feel to it. This sweater had that rough feel. I separated the pieces of the sweater (front, back, two sleeves) - fortunately it had been knitted in separate pieces that had been seamed together. Some machine-made sweaters are cut out of sheets of fabric, which is no good because you can't get a continuous strand of yarn. As I wrapped the yarn around a chair back, I noticed a few things:

• The yarn has two plies, and is a delicate fingering weight. Hmmm.


• If I drop the end of the yarn (like if I come to a hole in the sweater), the yarn does not all come undone from its skein on the chair back. It just ... sticks to itself. And sits there.


• The wool seems to have a very short staple length - it's easy to break. It may also be worn thin in some places.


• The sweater is more worn than I had thought. It has several holes. Some of them have been patched badly. Sweater owners of the world, when you get a hole, consider darning the knitting. If you must sew with thread, do it carefully. No matter how tempting it is to load the needle with thread and go STAB STAB STAB until you have a gigantic tangle of thread embedded in your knitting.


• Who am I kidding? I sew by the STAB STAB STAB method too.