What Knitters get up too

No, no, nothing April Foolish. Nothing so grand as what fun was surely had in Toronto at the Harlot's book launch (not that we here in cold Edmonton are jealous or anything - no. Not at all) Bravo Harlot, we toasted to your health.

Tuesday afternoons are Sit 'n Knit days. I really enjoy having this luxury or taking an afternoon just to talk and gab and show and ask questions and work with a bunch of people who are nutty about strings. Its the nicest feeling on earth to be surrounded by your compatriots...Even if they display their lovely socks when all you have on your feet is plain Janenylon sockets, because that is all you have in your drawer and your laundry pile threatens to fall over and crush you.

Don't be thinking the plain pair is 'just' a plain pair. They match colours to perfection, and have a nifty added little gusset to fit the owners foot just right. Even plain can be fancy in this crowd.

Today is not sit and knit day so I probably should be doing the laundry. But I'm not. I found myself falling for the siren song of the Cloud Cotton from my LYS, River City Yarn.

This is the yarn which did not fit into my storage containers. This yarn is the prime reason that I had to get some more storage containers yesterday.

It has been calling me for weeks, seducing me, haunting me. I told it to pipe down a few times, but as we we all know, yarn speaks but it seldom hears (yarn must be in a perpetual state of adolescence). Yarn does not respond to human pleas to be left alone by those of us infected by string things. In the process of putting it away into the container, some of it just happened to touch my hand, which just happened to have a crochet hook in it, which just magically produced this.

Knitting produces a flowing fabric of single layers of yarn, while crochet produces a fabric of multiple layers. Its very, very easy to make a stiff unyielding fabric in crochet in a worsted weight yarn. I took great care because this is too nice a yarn to do that to. I played with it, making swatches till midnight, but finally found that the 'old reliable' 5mm hook worked best.

The fabric is soft (from the yarn), drapey (from the stitch), but is still going to carry itself well when when it narrows stitches at the shoulder carry the weight of the rest of the sweater below. Rubbing it in my hands reminds me of putting my hands into a big bag of cotton balls. Its aptly named. Cloud Cotton indeed.