Oatmeal On a Cold Morning

That’s what this new scarf is like. Like a bowl of steaming hot-before it starts to cool down and turn into glue, perfectly right oatmeal with brown sugar and milk on top and maybe raisins. (Maybe not. I’m 40 years old and still not sure of my position on raisins.)

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I cast on for this scarf on Thursday night and it was done by Saturday and for one of the first times ever I was sad to be done with a project. Usually, by the time something is finished, especially something simple, I’m done. Way done. I’m either bored and ready to do something else, or sick of it because it’s just gone on too long and I can hear the siren call of other yarns, or I’m just excited to have it finished and have moved entirely past loving it as a process and am ready to see it as a product…

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Not this time. I feel like I could have knit this forever and ever and ever, and I’d say that 80% of that was the yarn. The other 20% likely represents the brain cells I haven’t grown back after the last tour, and the fact that I wasn’t feeling well at all this weekend, and was therefore very, very easily amused, even by a simple 2X2 rib. I re-watched part of the Thorn Birds too, while I churned away on this, and do not even start to diss that miniseries. I love it. It’s a work of art and an epic. Also it has a young Richard Chamberlain as Father Ralph De Bricassart and forbidden love and Meggie Cleary in the ashes of roses dress, and a rampaging wild boar, and thousands of sheep. What more could you ask for? What more could you want?

Seriously.

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Sorry. Back to the yarn. I got this yarn as an extremely good present years ago on a visit to Kalamazoo and it’s been haunting me a little bit since then. It was love at first sight, and I’ve been waiting to knit it. It’s Marr Haven Merino Rambouillet – Mule Spun yarn, and I think it’s quite possibly one of the cushiest rides I’ve been on in a long while. It’s lofty, it’s bouncy, it’s dense without being heavy and fluffy without seeming fragile. It’s still got some of the lanolin in it so it really smells right, like it came from a sheep and it’s rustic like whole grain bread is. I loved this yarn so much that I was asked by several people to kindly refrain from asking people to squeeze it. (I forgot that not all non-knitters think it’s fun to play with balls of yarn, although we all agree that asking people if they would like to squeeze your balls is always funny, and is only compounded when they say things like “wow, those balls are softer than I thought they would be” or heaven forbid “bigger”.)

I loved this yarn so much that I actually thought of ordering more as soon as I finished, which cracked me up a bit because the point of this scarf was stash busting, not test driving, and if knitting two skeins lands you ten more you’re sort of defeating the purpose… you know?

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Marr Haven scarf. 1.5 skeins of Marr Haven Worsted Weight yarn in Medium Grey and Natural. 6mm needles. 28 stitches in 2×2 rib, slipping the first stitch of every row.

When that was done I cast on for a vest, but more about that tomorrow. Tuesdays are for spinning.

(See how everything falls into place when I’m home?)

PS. While I was in Jacksonville I met a knitter named Renee doing her thesis on knitting. (I bet some of you who were there remember her.) She needs volunteers to fill in her survey so that she can validate her theories. If you have a minute, can I ask you to help her out here? It’s interesting work, and good for all of us.