Fiber Dreams

On Monday I posted about my dissatisfaction with the way the beautiful Bambino yarn from Chameleon Colorworks was pooling. Out came the knitting. And boy, am I glad. So far I only have a half inch of knitting done on the smaller needles, but the colors are behaving, not yet pooling at all. The colors are marching around the ribbing as they should, not resting in any one place for too long, not overstaying their welcome. Not yet anyway. Fingers crossed. There is great hope for these socks. Naturally, though, at the moment I’m not happy with my choice of stitch patterns. This yarn is now making me think of flowers. I’m not sure if I can knit flowers that’ll show up with all these far-from-subtle color shifts. I have another half inch of ribbing to knit while I think about it.

I have the great honor to have in my possession a number of things that belonged to one or the other of my grandmothers. One category is rugs. I have several rugs that my maternal grandmother bought when she was in the Philippines back before my mother was born. This one, a small oval area rug, used to be in Grandma’s hallway in her house in San Francisco. Right now it lives under the coffee table in my family room. I’ve always loved the colors in—and design of—this rug, and often stopped momentarily on my trip down Grandma’s short hallway to gaze at it, not knowing at the time that it would eventually grace my own home, and I’d get to enjoy it every day. The center of the rug is that solid dark plum color that you see near the bottom of the photo, while the two ends have these graceful designs.

I noticed over the weekend, when I was knitting the stuff that I pulled out on Monday, that the colors in this yarn were a lot like those in Grandma’s rug. Here. Let me show you.

The only things missing, really, are the shades of blue. Amazing, isn’t it? When I pulled back from this, I actually had a hard time seeing the knitting lying on the rug. And I knew it was there.

While going down a needle size was exactly what was needed with the Bambino, it’s equally clear that going up a needle size was exactly what was needed for Mingus.

I’ve been screaming along on this sock since I restarted with the larger needles. Here you see one full pattern repeat, the ribbing, and a couple rows of the second repeat. The fabric is much softer, looser, pliable than my first go. And it fits easily over my foot. Yes. So worth the trouble. Very glad I tore it out and restarted.

I got some fun comments yesterday about naming the vine stole. Robin (blogless) thinks it should be called Black Forest, regardless of the fact that Germany’s Black Forest probably doesn’t have any vines in it. Denise (also blogless) suggested that the stole be named Bittersweet after a dark-leaved vine (Solanum dulcamara) that’s often found in forests. That’s a very interesting idea, Denise. I like it. I make no promises, but I’ll definitely consider it. Thank you for suggesting it!

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