There’s a larval real-time marvel to be found

I’m sad to say this is not an update on the mittens – as I’m nearing the end of my Bachelor’s thesis, I needed something a little more brainless. So I cast on a blanket. That’s right, it’s July and I’ve started with this year’s Christmas presents, and OF COURSE a blanket in bulky-weight wool yarn is the perfect project for these warm summer days.

Anyway, the point being, I’m using Cascade Ecological Wool and Eco+ (which is the same thing, only dyed), and they come in these HUGE 250 g skeins. Good lord. As I’ve discovered when I split some 400 g sock yarn cones into thirds, 130 g of yarn is really all I can comfortably wind, after that, the ball gets too bulky for me to hold without putting some considerable strain on my hands.

This discovery was only validated and expanded upon when I wound two of my five Eco skeins into balls, and I figured: there’s gotta be a better way of doing that.

As it turns out, there is. Jacqueline Fee’s yarn cocoon is something I’d tried before with disastrous results in cobweb-weight yarn, but it seems perfect for these big, thick skeins where the yarn sticks together a bit instead of just becoming a big tangled mess of slip-slidey thread. And winding them is really quite relaxing.

Also, I love the look of them. They really do look like cocoons, don’t they? They are, admittedly, a bit bigger than the balls/ yarn cakes I wind – they end up being around the size of the original skein – but they don’t tend to roll around quite as much, which is always a relief.

I’ll report back when I’ve knitted up more of them, i.e. how much they collapse when a bit more of the center is gone, and how well they hold up under the stress of being hauled around, but as of right now, I’m thoroughly charmed. Also, my hands hurt way less.

A Tale of Two Mittens

With only two weeks to go until I have to hand in my Bachelor’s thesis, I’ve been experiencing a serious case of startitis. And a bit of finish-it-up-itis, which is nice.

In the course of this, I recently finished a pair of Gryffindor mittens, nothing fancy: I did some corrugated ribbing for the wrist, took the chart from the House Bag pattern, and continued the checkerboard pattern on the palm. They’re awesome and I can’t wait to wear them, but I also learned a couple of things from them, and when my roomie and a good friend of mine both asked for a pair of House Mittens, I figured this might be a good opportunity to document my designing process, on the off-chance that others might be able to learn from my mistakes.

So, I present you with the first installment of:

Part One: Gathering wool. And books, and some more ideas, and general information.