Delays. And Excuses...Not!
Nope, no excuses. Not a one. It's been over a week since my last post, and hey, it happens. Now, if I could just ignore that guilty feeling. ;)
It sure was a week and a bit of good sleep, though, because I got back onto anti-cholesterol pills, and apparently the side affect I get is longer sleeping hours. But oy, the price. $51.49 for a month. Which is still good, though, because they're not Lipitor, which costs about $100 for a month's supply. Still, along with every other scrip I've got being renewed and refilled this time, the total bite was $140. Ouch. (Keep your fingers crossed, I may be able to make it onto an insurance plan; it's sign-up time.)
So anyway, I'm not going to be buying yarn this month. Although sweaters... Yeah, I got another six or so. Thursday was Shopping Day, and I was led by the siren call of Value Village. There's a gorgeous cream lambswool/angora/nylon almost done, and - be still, my heart! - a 100% black cashmere is totally ravished. (Size small, alas, but enough for a couple smaller projects.) I think the latter will end up being part of a chullo hat for my brother. Black would go good with some stranded colorwork, don't you think? And will be warm and cuddly and oh-so-soft. I may have to ply the cashmere so it equals the gauge of fingering or DK weight sock yarn, but maybe not. I'll see how it looks after washing; it should plump up. On the other hand, like most of the other reclaimed yarn, it's not one strand, but multiple super-fine strands simply knit together. Even if it regains its full thickness, I still may re-spin it just to give it more strength, loft and bounce. Heh; another job for my new spindle!
Plus there's an angora, silk, nylon and (a whole 2%) lambswool blend; two big cotton/ramie ones; and one that's a real mishmash. ::takes a deep breath:: It's cotton, silk, wool, linen, nylon and ramie. Whew! The thing is, it's made with strips of cables in different colors. I think some of the colors are linen/ramie/cotton, and others are wool/silk/nylon. At least that'd be my guess from the feel. I'm glad I'm a spinner, it helps figuring out these things. I wish it helped more on the figuring out the mysteries of ripping. So far I've only encountered three (3) sweaters with which I could do what people have so airily described as, "...find the end with the knot, then pull, and the seam will unzip, usually all the way to the waist!"
Uh, no. I may have discovered a hitherto hidden talent. That of choosing sweaters which have weird seamage. The previous batch - which I haven't quite finished with yet, though almost - had the hand-knit tourist wool sweater, with inscrutable indigenous seaming of a twisty-minded nature (still plugging away at that); the two cotton hand-knits with, yep, hand-sewn mattress stitch seams; and the gray presumably-wool one with extra seams, just for a lark. The first one, the plain and simple, non-super-fine weight wool one...well, it would've no doubt unzipped, but it was my learning sweater, so I totally blew that opportunity.
In this batch, the cashmere sweater has so far been the easiest to take apart. And that despite its being a cardigan, with a button band that went all the way around to form the collar band, too. In some of the posts I read on Ravelry's Thrifty Knitters Group, there were warnings about cardigans. But that one unzipped just fine. Mostly. And almost every bit of the yarn was usable.
The lambswool-angora, now... Parts of it unzipped. With two of the seams having the added little "let's keep you on your toes" addition of unzipping in two directions. Yeah, you read that right. I started from the top, then halfway down the seam, found I had to turn around and re-start from the bottom. Weird. But they did unzip.
The rest of the seams in that sucker, though, even though sewn the same way, in whatever method they use that looks kind of like a crochet chain... Oh, no. No unzipping. Nopeski. I could not find which end would unzip. (Like a sugar sack does when you find the right end, as Mrs. K helpfully told me, which was the most understandable description yet. Unlike the sweaters themselves.) I found the little knots. I cut the little knots. I gently teased apart the first few stitches. Then I tried tugging - carefully - at each end. Then I tried snipping a little. Tugged some more. Grew a little frustrated, flipped around to the other end of the seam and repeated. Started cussing under my breath, snipped several more times, tugged in different directions this time, and eventually yanked. No dice. Began to get rather red in the face (plus louder), flailed away with the scissors, and yanked hard. At both ends. Grabbed and pulled like the devil. Not only got louder, but somewhat shrill.
I dunno what industrial-strength seam stitch they were using on those particular seams, but they weren't zipping anywhere, not for nuthin'. I ended up snipping all the way through every one. Which was something of a feat, because they were so tightly-sewn that I could hardly pull them apart enough to even see the seam thread.
Obviously, that was one quality sweater, because I think the yarn would've broken before the seam stitching did. It was pretty interesting unraveling those sections, too, because bits of the seam thread were still stubbornly hanging together, and I had to snip and pick them out almost stitch by stitch.
However, I finally made it through unraveling the sleeves, and am - at long last - ready to start unraveling the body.
There was one sweater I gave up on entirely, but that wasn't due to seams. No, it was because of the yarns. It used a strand of angora about the thickness of frog hair, and a strand of fine, nubby silk. The angora was ok, but the silk? Oh my god. The silk yarn hadn't borne up well under something. Cleaning method, age, the stress of being knitted or worn, whatever... The nubs separated from the silk strand like crazy. It was rip a yard or so, bat away the shower of silk bits that were snowing about me. Or at least it seemed that way. I'm fine with the gentle drift of fuzz that floats around while you're ripping out angora. The silk shedding, on the other hand, was nasty. It looked like the silk was disintegrating. And ok, silk is strong, but this was starting to look ridiculous after a couple of sections. I thought for all of three seconds or so about trying to full the sucker to make something. Silk will shrink, and you can do some felting with the fiber; angora can be fulled, too, although I can't remember how successfully. Well, ok, at least it mats together; on the rabbit, if nothing else. Whatever. Then I thought to myself, "What are you possibly going to use it for; a silk/angora fulled bag, maybe?!", and came to my senses. Plus that'd involve - gack - sewing. By hand. (Remember that post last year? Evil sewing machine, fiend from nethermost depths of Hell, chains & padlocks, "One machine to sew them all..."?? Yeah. No machine-sewing, felted stuff or otherwise. No way in - hah - Hell.) As to hand-sewing... Avaunt, avaunt, get thee outta here!
Besides, even if the sucker could felt down enough, what - I'm gonna use a silk/angora bag? Or anything else one could conceivably make out of it?
Hell no.
(You see how the very thought makes my language deteriorate. It isn't all due to the emotions brought up by mention of the possessed sewing machine from the nether-- Ok, you get the idea.)
So that sweater, I'm tossing. Hey, it didn't cost that much. Value Village doesn't have quite as good deals as the independent thrift store a couple blocks from me, but it was still less than, say, a ball of Cascade 220. On sale.
Thus while no knitting got done this week, there was a successful yarn reclamation.
I also went out (thank refilled Xanax) with Tina, my step-daughter, for lunch and a movie. Forgetting my camera, as is my usual wont on these occasions. I dunno what's up with that, because I'd really like to get some pix of her. Must try to remember better. Anyway, we haven't made it out for several months, so we were way overdue for a girl's day out. Had a nice lunch, and went to see National Treasure 2, which we found highly enjoyable and just as good as the first one. I certainly hope the clear implications of a third comes through, because it'd make a great trilogy.
But now I'm about to proceed to the highly enjoyable process of getting to bed. Which may be interesting. No, it's nothing like that! I think the neighbor in the apartment below me has moved out, because there have been bouts of noises the last week and a half sounding suspiciously like refurbishing-and-cleaning. Which normally aren't all that bad, y'know, except when they bring in the carpet cleaners. But today? I have no bloody idea what they could be doing. I don't recognize the noises. (I've heard pretty much every refurbishing noise they can make, after living here 17 years, with multiple neighbors moving in and out.) Whatever it is alternates hammering, hammering-and-chiseling, plus thuds and vibrations like he (sounds like only one guy down there) is trying to detach and rock something really heavy out of a wall installation. It's not in the right place for them to be working in the kitchen, so presumably it's not dismantling cabinets. What, they're taking out the main heater in the living room? Maybe. All I know for sure is that it's noisy.
Wish him luck, huh? Or an assistant. He's been at it for almost an hour, and I'm hoping not to be kept awake another couple of hours.
Or the rest of the day, at this rate. ;)
Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Thursday was also Tornado Day. Yes, we had a tornado in the PNW. Not in Portland, though; over in a Vancouver, WA neighborhood across the Columbia River. Close enough, being not quite opposite my section of Portland. It was about 1/4 mile wide, and I think the total length of touchdown was about 3 miles, but man...we were all going, "What is this, Oklahoma?!?" Every news station in town had breathless, continuous coverage of the sort we normally reserve for 2" of snow. Or earthquakes, eruptions, floods and windstorms. (Earthquakes, it depends on how bad they were. Most only get a brief program interrupt.) Last I heard, only property damage, no fatalities. But definitely a major yikes for the day. Oklahoma would rightfully laugh at the size and our freakout, but for us, this was a huge one; and they're so rare around here that we just don't consider them, y'know? The last one we had that caused any serious damage and some deaths was in 1972, after all. I only remember about three that actually touched down and caused damage in my entire life!
Now said earthquakes, windstorms, floods... Upsetting and dangerous, yeah. But we're used to them. Volcanic eruptions, not so common; but we were at least aware they could occur around here before Mt. St. Helens blew. And most of our volcanoes are surrounded by umpteen miles of National Forest, anyway. Not likely to pick up their foothills and come randomly romping through the middle of Vancouver or Portland.
Plus earthquakes, at least, don't have regular seasons. Every year!
You couldn't pay me to live in regular tornado country. I'll take earthquakes, thank you.
Hmm. The guy seems to have finished the current phase of remodeling. Ok, bye, I'd better get to bed quick while it's fairly quiet!
It sure was a week and a bit of good sleep, though, because I got back onto anti-cholesterol pills, and apparently the side affect I get is longer sleeping hours. But oy, the price. $51.49 for a month. Which is still good, though, because they're not Lipitor, which costs about $100 for a month's supply. Still, along with every other scrip I've got being renewed and refilled this time, the total bite was $140. Ouch. (Keep your fingers crossed, I may be able to make it onto an insurance plan; it's sign-up time.)
So anyway, I'm not going to be buying yarn this month. Although sweaters... Yeah, I got another six or so. Thursday was Shopping Day, and I was led by the siren call of Value Village. There's a gorgeous cream lambswool/angora/nylon almost done, and - be still, my heart! - a 100% black cashmere is totally ravished. (Size small, alas, but enough for a couple smaller projects.) I think the latter will end up being part of a chullo hat for my brother. Black would go good with some stranded colorwork, don't you think? And will be warm and cuddly and oh-so-soft. I may have to ply the cashmere so it equals the gauge of fingering or DK weight sock yarn, but maybe not. I'll see how it looks after washing; it should plump up. On the other hand, like most of the other reclaimed yarn, it's not one strand, but multiple super-fine strands simply knit together. Even if it regains its full thickness, I still may re-spin it just to give it more strength, loft and bounce. Heh; another job for my new spindle!
Plus there's an angora, silk, nylon and (a whole 2%) lambswool blend; two big cotton/ramie ones; and one that's a real mishmash. ::takes a deep breath:: It's cotton, silk, wool, linen, nylon and ramie. Whew! The thing is, it's made with strips of cables in different colors. I think some of the colors are linen/ramie/cotton, and others are wool/silk/nylon. At least that'd be my guess from the feel. I'm glad I'm a spinner, it helps figuring out these things. I wish it helped more on the figuring out the mysteries of ripping. So far I've only encountered three (3) sweaters with which I could do what people have so airily described as, "...find the end with the knot, then pull, and the seam will unzip, usually all the way to the waist!"
Uh, no. I may have discovered a hitherto hidden talent. That of choosing sweaters which have weird seamage. The previous batch - which I haven't quite finished with yet, though almost - had the hand-knit tourist wool sweater, with inscrutable indigenous seaming of a twisty-minded nature (still plugging away at that); the two cotton hand-knits with, yep, hand-sewn mattress stitch seams; and the gray presumably-wool one with extra seams, just for a lark. The first one, the plain and simple, non-super-fine weight wool one...well, it would've no doubt unzipped, but it was my learning sweater, so I totally blew that opportunity.
In this batch, the cashmere sweater has so far been the easiest to take apart. And that despite its being a cardigan, with a button band that went all the way around to form the collar band, too. In some of the posts I read on Ravelry's Thrifty Knitters Group, there were warnings about cardigans. But that one unzipped just fine. Mostly. And almost every bit of the yarn was usable.
The lambswool-angora, now... Parts of it unzipped. With two of the seams having the added little "let's keep you on your toes" addition of unzipping in two directions. Yeah, you read that right. I started from the top, then halfway down the seam, found I had to turn around and re-start from the bottom. Weird. But they did unzip.
The rest of the seams in that sucker, though, even though sewn the same way, in whatever method they use that looks kind of like a crochet chain... Oh, no. No unzipping. Nopeski. I could not find which end would unzip. (Like a sugar sack does when you find the right end, as Mrs. K helpfully told me, which was the most understandable description yet. Unlike the sweaters themselves.) I found the little knots. I cut the little knots. I gently teased apart the first few stitches. Then I tried tugging - carefully - at each end. Then I tried snipping a little. Tugged some more. Grew a little frustrated, flipped around to the other end of the seam and repeated. Started cussing under my breath, snipped several more times, tugged in different directions this time, and eventually yanked. No dice. Began to get rather red in the face (plus louder), flailed away with the scissors, and yanked hard. At both ends. Grabbed and pulled like the devil. Not only got louder, but somewhat shrill.
I dunno what industrial-strength seam stitch they were using on those particular seams, but they weren't zipping anywhere, not for nuthin'. I ended up snipping all the way through every one. Which was something of a feat, because they were so tightly-sewn that I could hardly pull them apart enough to even see the seam thread.
Obviously, that was one quality sweater, because I think the yarn would've broken before the seam stitching did. It was pretty interesting unraveling those sections, too, because bits of the seam thread were still stubbornly hanging together, and I had to snip and pick them out almost stitch by stitch.
However, I finally made it through unraveling the sleeves, and am - at long last - ready to start unraveling the body.
There was one sweater I gave up on entirely, but that wasn't due to seams. No, it was because of the yarns. It used a strand of angora about the thickness of frog hair, and a strand of fine, nubby silk. The angora was ok, but the silk? Oh my god. The silk yarn hadn't borne up well under something. Cleaning method, age, the stress of being knitted or worn, whatever... The nubs separated from the silk strand like crazy. It was rip a yard or so, bat away the shower of silk bits that were snowing about me. Or at least it seemed that way. I'm fine with the gentle drift of fuzz that floats around while you're ripping out angora. The silk shedding, on the other hand, was nasty. It looked like the silk was disintegrating. And ok, silk is strong, but this was starting to look ridiculous after a couple of sections. I thought for all of three seconds or so about trying to full the sucker to make something. Silk will shrink, and you can do some felting with the fiber; angora can be fulled, too, although I can't remember how successfully. Well, ok, at least it mats together; on the rabbit, if nothing else. Whatever. Then I thought to myself, "What are you possibly going to use it for; a silk/angora fulled bag, maybe?!", and came to my senses. Plus that'd involve - gack - sewing. By hand. (Remember that post last year? Evil sewing machine, fiend from nethermost depths of Hell, chains & padlocks, "One machine to sew them all..."?? Yeah. No machine-sewing, felted stuff or otherwise. No way in - hah - Hell.) As to hand-sewing... Avaunt, avaunt, get thee outta here!
Besides, even if the sucker could felt down enough, what - I'm gonna use a silk/angora bag? Or anything else one could conceivably make out of it?
Hell no.
(You see how the very thought makes my language deteriorate. It isn't all due to the emotions brought up by mention of the possessed sewing machine from the nether-- Ok, you get the idea.)
So that sweater, I'm tossing. Hey, it didn't cost that much. Value Village doesn't have quite as good deals as the independent thrift store a couple blocks from me, but it was still less than, say, a ball of Cascade 220. On sale.
Thus while no knitting got done this week, there was a successful yarn reclamation.
I also went out (thank refilled Xanax) with Tina, my step-daughter, for lunch and a movie. Forgetting my camera, as is my usual wont on these occasions. I dunno what's up with that, because I'd really like to get some pix of her. Must try to remember better. Anyway, we haven't made it out for several months, so we were way overdue for a girl's day out. Had a nice lunch, and went to see National Treasure 2, which we found highly enjoyable and just as good as the first one. I certainly hope the clear implications of a third comes through, because it'd make a great trilogy.
But now I'm about to proceed to the highly enjoyable process of getting to bed. Which may be interesting. No, it's nothing like that! I think the neighbor in the apartment below me has moved out, because there have been bouts of noises the last week and a half sounding suspiciously like refurbishing-and-cleaning. Which normally aren't all that bad, y'know, except when they bring in the carpet cleaners. But today? I have no bloody idea what they could be doing. I don't recognize the noises. (I've heard pretty much every refurbishing noise they can make, after living here 17 years, with multiple neighbors moving in and out.) Whatever it is alternates hammering, hammering-and-chiseling, plus thuds and vibrations like he (sounds like only one guy down there) is trying to detach and rock something really heavy out of a wall installation. It's not in the right place for them to be working in the kitchen, so presumably it's not dismantling cabinets. What, they're taking out the main heater in the living room? Maybe. All I know for sure is that it's noisy.
Wish him luck, huh? Or an assistant. He's been at it for almost an hour, and I'm hoping not to be kept awake another couple of hours.
Or the rest of the day, at this rate. ;)
Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Thursday was also Tornado Day. Yes, we had a tornado in the PNW. Not in Portland, though; over in a Vancouver, WA neighborhood across the Columbia River. Close enough, being not quite opposite my section of Portland. It was about 1/4 mile wide, and I think the total length of touchdown was about 3 miles, but man...we were all going, "What is this, Oklahoma?!?" Every news station in town had breathless, continuous coverage of the sort we normally reserve for 2" of snow. Or earthquakes, eruptions, floods and windstorms. (Earthquakes, it depends on how bad they were. Most only get a brief program interrupt.) Last I heard, only property damage, no fatalities. But definitely a major yikes for the day. Oklahoma would rightfully laugh at the size and our freakout, but for us, this was a huge one; and they're so rare around here that we just don't consider them, y'know? The last one we had that caused any serious damage and some deaths was in 1972, after all. I only remember about three that actually touched down and caused damage in my entire life!
Now said earthquakes, windstorms, floods... Upsetting and dangerous, yeah. But we're used to them. Volcanic eruptions, not so common; but we were at least aware they could occur around here before Mt. St. Helens blew. And most of our volcanoes are surrounded by umpteen miles of National Forest, anyway. Not likely to pick up their foothills and come randomly romping through the middle of Vancouver or Portland.
Plus earthquakes, at least, don't have regular seasons. Every year!
You couldn't pay me to live in regular tornado country. I'll take earthquakes, thank you.
Hmm. The guy seems to have finished the current phase of remodeling. Ok, bye, I'd better get to bed quick while it's fairly quiet!