Playing yarn chicken... and losing.

While waiting for a computer ordered on ebay to arrive so I could get back to work at a project which would actually pay me real money, I embarked on what I called “nervous knitting” to keep me from losing my mind. It was a very stressful time. My own computer had overheated and died and I didn’t want to have to upgrade my software halfway through the project. I’ve been using the same program since 2006. So the Mac technician suggested I find a similar model to my own and he could transfer over the hard drive. I did as he suggested, purchasing an identical computer on ebay which took almost two weeks to arrive. It was during those two weeks that I knit another Mad Blood shawl by Mary-Anne Mace with 100% bamboo yarn by Dye-Versions I’d bought at last spring’s Knitters’ Frolic in Toronto. I’d also bought a large bag of No. 6 red beads, and as the yarn was a lurid combination of black and red called “Vampire’s Kiss,” I thought they deserved each other.

I tested this pattern years ago with a 100% wool light fingering yarn by Sweet Paprika and it made more of a shawlette than a shawl, especially as the wool tends to shrink up after blocking, not staying stretched out. Bamboo, though, is a different fibre altogether. It stretches hugely in the blocking and even afterward. In my original Mad Blood, I didn’t add beads. One of the testers did and the designer incorporated her placings into the final pattern. I decided there weren’t enough beads, and added more earlier on.

There was one issue that I considered and planned for, and that was that I didn’t have enough yarn to knit the pattern as written. So, accordingly, I eliminated one repeat of the vertical motif by omitting an increase row in the plain knitting part and starting the lace at the appropriate number of stitches. I still didn’t have enough of the bamboo.

I ran out of bamboo yarn nine rows from the end. This is not the first time I’ve gone stash diving to find something to edge a shawl with, and I think that contrasting edgings are often quite dramatic looking. But the problem was not a colour thing, but a textural issue. As I said, bamboo stretches. If I used wool, it would shrink up against the vegetable fibre. Silk might have worked, but I didn’t have any in my stash of an appropriate weight or colour. The best I could do was cotton fingering that I had acquired so long ago it seems like it’s always been there. It’s the stuff I pull out when I need a provisional crochet cast-on; not particularly high-quality material. But I used it anyway and this is the result.

It’s not great, but it works. My son took photos of me modeling it.

In retrospect, I probably should have worn a different top.