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March 10, 2005

I'm Kureyon Your Love With Me

I'm Kureyon Your Love With Me
West Virginia down to Tennessee
And I'm movin' with the Good Lord's Speed
Kureyon your love with meeee....

Guess you have to be a country music fan to get that one ;)

My very first date with a big hank of Noro Kureyon and already we have a tempestuous relationship. I love the Noro, I hate the Noro. And it's totally indifferent to me.

On the one hand, the texture is so earthy and appealing ... I'm using warm, organic Color #7 in celery, green, brown, reddish brown, pale sand, etc. It's nubby and the basket weave/checkerboard pattern I'm using is perfect for it. Very uber-texture.

On the other hand, this yarn may be a little too "textured" ... I cannot tell you how many pieces of hay, twigs, and burrs I have dug out of the strands. At first, being the knitting newbie that I am, I thought that very miniscule "twig" in the wool was from my beloved Lantern Moon needles splitting, or burring, and I was not pleased. At all. After the burrs, twigs and hay kept a' comin', I finally figured out it was the yarn. (Yes, I am Laurie, master of the obvious.)

I was almost 3/4 of the way through my first ball when I encountered a knot, something I hate hate hate in cheaper yarn but utterly loathe and feel offended by in expensive yarn, especially something that's $16.25 a hank like el Noro.

I had not yet searched the internet for better ways of joining yarn, so the first Noro Knot became a nubbier row. I unknotted it and sort of double-stranded for a stitch, being careful to weave in the ends (I can't bear a knot right in the middle of a scarf. I don't know how you experienced knitters handle this, especially when the knot just sneaks up on you like in the Noro.)

Close-up shot of the pattern, sans knot:

My next Noro no-no moment occurred when I realized the end of skein numero uno was completely different in color than either end of skein numero dos. My basket weave scarf was ending it's ball-y-hoo on a dark, sage green strand. My new ball had one brown end and one rust colored end.

Not even close to sage green, and it was too obvious a difference for me to start a new stripe. *

* Yes, I am OCD, perfectionistic and neurotic. However, in knitting one can only control so much. For example, there are lots of bad, bad things in my scarf. I like to think of them as "character-adding" traits. But a jog from sage to immediate rust would. not. do.

When I bought my second hank of Big Kureyon from Knit, Purl & Co, I saw another dreaded knot just as it was being spun into a ball. But it was the only hank in my color and dye lot so I took it. This morning I found myself carefully unwinding the professionally wound Noro ball to dig out the knot, hoping the bastard knot would be tying together two pieces of yarn in different colors, one of which (cross those fingers!) would be close to my sage-green scarf tail.

Now, you may be thinking at this point in The World's Longest Noro Story that I have way too much time on my hands, but the story gets better. Or worse, depending on how your tolerance is for yarn talk.

After some seeking, I found The Dreaded Noro Knot in my new skein. The knot joined two pieces of ivory yarn. No easy out here! No sage for Laurie! So, I unknotted the Noro into two pieces. Then, I began unwinding each half of the skein looking for a deep green to match my scarf tail. When I found the nearest sage-y green, I cut the noro -- yes I cut the noro! -- and I felted the green ends together for a felted join (no I did not use spit) (gross!).

So, at this point, I have theoretically joined a new ball of yarn. However, if you've been following along closely, you would have noticed that I have TWO balls of yarn out of skein #2, plus some leftover yarn from the cut. Not good. We'll call my new Noro children Ball A and Ball B. The bastard stepchild yarn leftover from my Noro cutting expedition goes into the pile of unused bits.

Ball A is attached to my scarf, green on green. He is a very small ball of yarn, and he ends on an ivory note.

Ball B is a naughty, uncooperative yarn child. I'd like to give him back and pick out a better, more well-behaved child. Oh well. Ball B begins with rust brown and ends in the other sagey/brown stuff that I cut to get my green colorway in Ball A. Confused yet? I looked at both ends and decided the best thing to do was find something, anything to join to Ball A. Found some ivory on Ball B a wee bit down on the brownish colorway, and snip! I am a yarn cutting fool! Felted the ivory tail of Ball A to the new ivory beginning of Ball B and voila, the weirdest yarn ball situation ever:

I found a colorway in Ball A that was close to the ivory tail of ball B and hand felted the ends together (no spit! no spit!) for one crazy lunatic Noro ball system. Voila!

What a pain in my ass.

But it's pretty.

Posted by laurie at March 10, 2005 05:06 PM

Comments

Posted by: Sarah Rocklin at April 13, 2005 09:41 AM