Busy Summer - Here Comes Autumn!

It's been a very busy summer - everyone goes on vacation, and we cover job duties for one another - and some folks get sick!  Not me - but a good friend who is a vital member of our work team did get sick, so it was back to overtime work for me!

I taught at Palmetto Tat Days in early September, and had a blast - it's always so much fun to be with friends who have much the same interests!  Some are also avid knitters, and that started a train of thought that led to knitting and my ever-growing yarn stash. 

I started looking through all my needlework stuff and discovered I couldn't find half the knitting needles I wanted - duhhh - they're all in works in progress!  It's nice to know that I can find them at Michael's and at HobLob (some sizes/kinds also available at Wally World), but as this was last Sunday, and I wasn't thinking about Wally World, we went to Mikey's.  I had looked over some free patterns online and found a shrug; I got the needles (a set of double-points and a 29" circular), and ... yes, I looked at yarns!

I have learned so much in the past week -

• Red Heart makes more than just the 4-ply worsted weight we all grew up with;
• Red Heart makes a boutique yarn called Unforgettable, which is like an acrylic version of roving;
• Red Heart should issue a warning with each ball of Unforgettable that warns you of impending frustration should you try to rip out what you knitted incorrectly.

Honestly, what should be so difficult about knitting Feather & Fan pattern?  Three rows of stocking stitch and one pattern row - what's so hard?  Well, let me tell you - because roving will split and you can (I did) inadvertently make an increase where you didn't intend.  It's also an absolute bear to un-knit - or even to remove the needle and try to rip with abandon; roving likes to stick to itself.  I got out my sharp little scissors and carefully snipped the strands trying to make friends with the stitch next door, and managed to get all the way back to my K2P2 ribbing.  At that point, I gave up on Feather & Fan and decided to try Trinity Stitch, which I memorized back in 10th grade (roughly 300 years ago, give or take a decade).

No, those aren't cobwebs -
they're roving fibers looking for friends!

It's hard to knit Unforgettable - - it's even harder to re-knit Unforgettable.  Let us draw the curtain on this tragic little scene; suffice to say that the ribbing and the lumpy bits that used to be the Unforgettable that I ripped back several times are in the basket and may stay there.  In the meantime, I found several online comments that this particular type of yarn is better suited to crochet, and I found a beautiful shawl pattern free online, so that's the plan for the upcoming week.  I have plain ol' worsted that I'll use to make the shrug.  I may even go back to Feather & Fan!