Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Cold Mountain

Back in August I started working on Cold Mountain by Kieran Foley. The plan was to have it done in time to wear to my friend Lynn's wedding on October 3. I used JaggerSpun Zephyr Wool-Silk in the colorway Ebony.

I actually managed to get a good portion of it done before I got sick. This is the second Kieran Foley design I have done, and I think it was easier than Seascape. After I started feeling like knitting again, I tried working on it, but I would find mistakes and get frustrated, so I decided not to work on it for a while. Then I received an invitation to the wedding of a friend's son. That was the motivation I needed to finish. I was so close to finishing on January 22, 2010, I decided I was finishing that night. It did not happen. I ended up having to rework a section three times, but I finally finished it on January 23, 2010.

Here are a couple of pictures of it I took before blocking.




I am not enamored of the yarn. The first skein of yarn had a number of bad spots where either the yarn simply came apart or otherwise looked bad. By the time of Irish Fest, I had spliced it seven times. A couple of my friends have used this yarn and not had any problems with it, but I happened to mention it to one of the judges for the knitting contest, and she indicated she knew what I was talking about. I ended up having to splice it another time before joining the new skein and one time after joining the new skein. And then to top it all off, it ripped along the bind off edge when I was blocking it!

I had been incredibly careful when blocking it, but I guess this yarn just is not very strong. Or maybe it was just the skeins I bought that were bad. Fortunately I was able to undo the bind off and splice the yarn again. This time I bound off even more loosely. I did not block it again, but it is not terribly noticeable.


2 comments:

Unknown said...

I am knitting Cold Mountain too with Jaggerspun Zephyr in charcoal. I didn't experience your problem (yet), but your Cold Mountain turned out really beautiful!

Zandra said...

Thanks! I have a feeling I just ended up with a bad skein or two.