Eastern European Yarn

My eldest son was traveling in the Ukraine, and I asked him to bring me back yarn should he bump into it. He spent time searching, though I really did not want it to be a task. I am delighted with what he came home with.

I've done the burn test and am certain that it has a fair bit of acrylic in it, but it is lovely and soft and I really do like the way the colours are coming out.

Some of the ladies I have shown it to wondered if it might be a sock yarn. It is the right gauge, and it has a sturdy sort of character to it. The colouring works out rather like a sock yarn and there seems to be about 400 metres to the skein.

One skein is the beginning of a shawl and skein two will be a...Well I haven't decided yet. If I can find a coordinating light yarn, a mohair I think, it might become part of a lightweight sweater. Think of the shirt style mohair confection in Sally Melville's Mother Daughter Knits or the soft delicate mohair sweater from the second Mason Dixon Knitting book.

While I am still busy writing up class notes for the Gansey class, I am also mid dilemma about fibres. Louet had a fantastic deal through the summer with my wheel and I have a credit of $200 for fibre to use. The store is putting an order in today, so I have to come up with a list of the fibres I want. The only way to rationally do this is to go through what I have and see what I need.

I think I am going to stick with natural colour fibres. Down the road, I'd like to play with dyeing and I'd like to experiment with how the different colour fibres take dyes and see what kind of fun I can have.

All this means I ought to face up to my fibre. Or not. I'm getting pretty good at compartmentalising such things. I seem to have a knack for knowing exactly how much I have container by container, bag by bag, and yet I am able to shield the full and cumulative sum of it all. It seems I choose not to be aware.

I think I am just going to close my eyes and go blindly forth. One day I will spin it all anyway and I am not sure I can face the trauma of accepting that I have yet another stash.