Life's a Stitch

When all else fails, read the directions. How long is it going to take me to learn that? Remember the Colinette Mercury I was knitting with a while back? I described it as being aptly named because the yarn "melted" into a pool even though carefully wound. Last night I found the label and noticed printing on the inside, printing I had missed the first time around. It says,"Mercury by name, mercury by nature. This yarn is liquid and will flow into its own form and tangle if set free!!! I added the exclamation points. Then it says, "So be in control!" That is their exclamation mark. Later into the instructions, "Do not attempt to wind this yarn on a yarn swift." Ha-ha I did that. "Well, look what happened to it" the label says to me. You were supposed to wind it into a ball over the back of a chair, place the ball in a small plastic bag, an "get knitting tangle free." Apologies to the s-i-l who spent two hours untangling the liquid mess. I’m seriously wondering if the ends I wove in will stay and have advised the Mercury scarf’s recipient that a needle and thread might prove good insurance against yarn with a mind if its own. I don’t think I’ll use Mercury again.

After I figured out my Fey Fantasia this project started to remind me of Groundhog Day. The movie, not the actual day that has recently passed, but the Bill Murray film where he gets to repeat the events of the day over and over until he gets it right. Fantasia is my Ground Hog Day scarf. It’s not bad enough  that I frogged it when I was 75% finished, the other night after merrily knitting away at my Chicks with Sticks group, I discovered a mistake that must have occurred in the first row of the evening. Instant replay; I had to frog it back by half for a do-over. At least the entire scarf is now being knitted with wavy frogged yarn. And here’s my new method of knitting with pinky extended: