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January 12, 2006
Con Mis Propias Manos*
The rumors are true, Zippy has been resurrected! I knew I wanted to knit Jason this sweater, but even as the weather grew cold I just could not bring myself to go back to the Smart Superwash I started with last year. It felt too scratchy to me, and doubling it made for too stiff a fabric. Once I allowed myself to start considering other yarns, the solution was clear: Manos. It's the yarn the pattern calls for, the color selection is awesome, and -- to be honest -- Jason deserves fabulous yarn. Especially for his first hand-knit sweater!
I dragged Jason to Wild & Woolly in Lexington, MA on New Year's Eve to pick out his color. He walked in, looked at the wall of Manos and almost instantaneously said "That one." Ah, to be a guy and decisive about garment colors.
Now I know that people in the Boston area -- including me! -- have mixed feelings about Wild & Woolly, but I went there because I knew they had a particularly wide selection of Manos. (And there is a limit to number of stores I can drag Jason to in one day.) They didn't have enough of the color he picked, so I ordered it. This is when I learned the real advantage to getting Manos at W&W: the Manos distributor is in Lexington, so I got a call the next day that my yarn was already in! Hurrah!
Has anybody ever received their Manos like this? It's 10 skeins, lashed together with three pieces of yarn. I wish I'd put something in that picture for scale, because it's an enormity of yarn. I was actually a little sad to take skeins out to start knitting. (A very little. It is Manos after all.) My only complaints? It catches and splits very occasionally on my needles, and the thick-and-thin took a bit of getting used to. But the color variation and general squooshiness of the yarn more than makes up for it. Yum.
Oh, and one more thing! Alison made me out to be some kind of knitting over-achiever, having arrived with four inches of work before she even started. What she graciously did not mention, however, is that on that very same night (after a long conversation on what "lightly blocked" means) I re-measured my work both with a measuring tape and around Jason's waist only to find that I had no choice but to rip it all out and start again with smaller needles (9s this time). I've done that, and am on the right track now gauge-wise... but I'm sure I've got some catching up to do!
*With My Own Hands
Posted by shannon at January 12, 2006 12:04 PM