The death of a party

Remember this?



I picked it up in Rhyader in 2006. It's Wendy Chic, a fun fur blend of a turquoise silken thread, with fluffy black bits and tinsel. Lovely and soft.

But there's nothing fun about fun fur. Oh no!

First I decided I'd make it into a boxy little top. Sideways knit on the chunky mc, dolman sleeves. Retro 80s. Did a tension swatch. Set up the knitleader. Made one piece. It came out perfectly wide enough. But incredibly shallow. It would have made a dinky batwing bikini. So it went, back in the stash, biding its time.

This week I picked up a copy of Machine Knitting Monthly. I stopped subscribing some time ago, because the patterns were uninspiring and getting re-printed quite regularly. It's had a face-lift, but the jury's still out for me, I'm afraid. Anyway, it had some funky fun-fur patterns - a waistcoat, shrug, pashmina etc, ideal for the xmas party season. I really fancied the shrug - I didn't have quite enough of the Chic, but I figured I'd shorten or lose the sleeves.

So I tried to unpick the batwing bikini. I could not figure out which end was the cast-on end, and after much poking about, I resorted to, gasp, the scissors. After finally establishing which end was which, I managed to unpick and rewind some of it (about a quarter), before the flufflinks* built up and stopped me. You know, the flufflinks - bits of fluff that accumulate on the yarn, and eventually build up on the row end where the last stitch always slides sideways slightly, linking the yarn ends together and resisting attempts to disentangle. The scissors got used again. Then, there was cursing, and bed (it was gone 10pm). I left the room looking as if there'd been a muppet murder.

Tonight I completed the back of the shrug, and one front. Alas, I forgot to check my tension dial, and the front was knitted at T7 and not T8 to match the back. Figured I'd unpick it and restart. And then came the flufflinks, again - it only takes ten minutes, and you're done for. And the cutting. Nurse, the screens!

The fun-fur, which is NO fun and certainly no party, is now waving at me from the bin. There are probably enough bits to make a scarf, but at this point in the proceedings, I really, really. Can't. Be. Arsed.

Feh!

:)

If I forgive it in the next few days before the bin gets emptied, it might make it into the fancy fur afghan. But I don't think so. It'll need a cast-off or overlocking, and I don't want to wreck my machine/fill it with tinsel. Last time I tried serging fun fur, I blew into the machine to clean it, and spent the next three days covered in black "stubble"!!! :D

Apols for some of the formatting of the posts (I usually fix it when I spot it). Using a crappy email program that insists on adding line breaks in weird places, unless I remember to send in HTML format....

* term suggested by the daughter of a Crafty Cottagette. I likes it!