I'll Stop the World and Felt With You

This is SO a knitting post. I'm sorry if you were tuning in for something else because, dudes, fiber will out. I am powerless against the forces of good and increases. (Get it? Hahaha, I slay myself. Ah, me.)

This is also a total expose (how does one make that little symbol in html?) of my ever increasing knitting compulsion. Obsession. Obsessive-Compulsive Knitting Disorder. (DK, I think there ought to be an official diagnosis.)

Warning: this might get a bit long. But then you'll be done with the knitting. At least for a little while...

So, when last we left our intrepid heroine, she was about to embark on knitting her first sweater. She was finishing up a few projects on the needles...

Edward Socks (shown here with their namesake who would NOT cooperate.):
(Underneath the socks in these pictures, I have a big bandage on my foot so THAT'S why the socks look a little wonky. I SWEAR it's not the knitting. Look: and while you're admiring the tape job, check out the really impressive scar on my left foot from my surgery.)

Matching Lin socks:


Ei's socks:


On which, of course, I ran out of yarn right at the toe. And, naturally, I cannot find any more Claudia Hand-painted yarn in Plumlicious. I've searched.

Sadly, I have had a falling out with the Claudia Hand-painted yarn. And oddly enough, so have all of my suppliers. While in Austin last week, I went to Hill Country Weavers and was really sad to see that the Claudia stock was down to almost nothing. I was looking for some yarn to finish my Lin's socks and found some yarn that is supposed to be a fingering weight but clearly had something WRONG with it:

I don't know if you can see from the picture but it's WAY too thick to be fingering. The one next to it (you know, the THIN one?) is what fingering weight yarn looks like. Of course, the thin one? Also has problems because it's supposed to be the same color as the other yarn. Look at this sock and the two yarns sitting with it:

They are ALL supposed to be Claudia Hand-painted yarn in Spring Break. Only, they really aren't.

I asked why the stock of Claudia was down to nothing at Hill Country Weavers and the woman said that the quality had been so inconsistent that they just didn't want to carry it anymore.

But anyway, back to our Intrepid Knitter who was, when last we saw her, finishing stuff. (Yessss.)

While finishing up socks, I got kind of sidetracked knitting my girls these bags, remember? And felting them. And then suddenly, I wanted to felt EVERYTHING. No, seriously. I wanted to felt THE WORLD.

Remember that commercial from years back with that woman who wallpapers everything? Like, even the refrigerator? That's what I'd like to do with felting.

So, first I started making Lin a bag out of this yarn: which I bought when I was first getting back into knitting and could not resist a good sale. It's so heavy, though, that about four skeins into it, I realized if I kept up the double stranding, it would weigh about sixty pounds when it was finished. So, I frogged it back and set about reknitting it with a single strand.

But while I was trying to decide what to do, I went to my local yarn store (any excuse at all) and bought some new yarn for Lin's bag. And I knitted it up.

In one afternoon. I'm not kidding. From a pattern I MADE UP.

But when I felted it, it turned out smaller than expected. (My washing machine has some issues and the knobs don't actually point to the real cycle anymore so it could just have been that I felted it for too long.)

While I was trying to decide what to do about THAT, I knitted and felted a bowl out of left-over yarn.

Yes. It's a bowl--what's your point?

And I, um, made up THAT pattern, too.

I showed it to my husband. He looked slightly alarmed. After suggesting that I consider marketing my bowl as a Rastafarian hat for American Girl dolls (which totally made me giggle), he said, "You knitted a bowl?"

"Yes."

"From a pattern you made up?"

"Yes."

"So, you've taken this knitting thing to a new level, is that what you're telling me?"

"Yes."

"A new level called CRAZY."