I thought I’d do my Monday post now rather than wait till morning. See, I am hoping to sleep in tomorrow morning and if the back of my head knows I have a blog post to do, it’ll never let me rest.
Healthwise, things have been a bit rocky this weekend here at casa de wolfandturtle :) Myria is still wheezing and coughing and I have been having similar problems. We’ve apparently picked up a respiratory virus (all in the family, right?) that seems to just love us. Neither of us has been sleeping well. To be fair, neither of us thinks this is anything serious - it’s just incredibly annoying and seems to be gleefully bent on making us as miserable as it can before our immune systems toss it out on its RNA. Feh…
Working with it is a whole ‘nother story. It manages to be both slippery and sticky. Is that one of the ordinary properties of rayon? The yarn blithely slides around/over/off any needle I’ve tried to work it on, though the Clover bamboos in the picture have given the best result. I’m not sure how such a seemingly friction-free fiber manages to be sticky at the same time, but just try to frog this stuff. I’ve had better luck frogging mohair and, as my mother would have said, that stuff sticks like sh*t to a blanket. The rayon is also totally inelastic - no stretch to the stuff at all. But don’t think it’s like working with cotton - with cotton, you can at least tug on the yarn and the stitches (if need be) to get them where you want them. Know what happens when you tug on a piece of this yarn? You wind up with two pieces of yarn :)
Sigh…
Anyway, when I first saw this chenille, I fell head-over-heels in love with it and purchased two hanks. Very shortly after I tried working with it for the first time, I knew the affair was over and it has been sitting in my stash cabinet for the last few months. Finally I decided that it had cost too much for me to just let it go so I dug it out yesterday and began this simple scarf/stole thingy. I can’t say that I’ve actually wrestled it into submission, but we seem to have reached an armed truce. This is intended to go with my brown velvet for formal evenings on my next trip in March. Whether it will get any use after that is highly doubtful. Sadly, while I now know that it’s true nature is of the vilest guttersnipe sort, it still looks, to me, like the angel of dawn.
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Hey you! Feel free to borrow the “box” idea! I’d be honored and interested to see your (undoubted!) improvements! I love that rayon yarn - beautiful colors. Sorry it’s such a PITA! RE: the bug you guys have - NETI POT. They sound gross, but they work wonderfully when you’re sneezy/wheezy. Jeff, my mom, and I all got them this past month and can BREATHE. RE: the bulb, YES, you should be able to store it. After the flowers die, cut the flower part off, but leave the leaves. Continue to give it sun and water. When they die back, stop watering. Remove the dirt, clip the stalk down a bit, and put it in a paper bag in the fridge for a few months. Keep it from getting moldy, and you should be able to force it again next year. But it needs to have its leaves left on while they’re green to store up sun energy for the root in order to bloom again, so only cut off the flower. Good luck!
I’m so sorry you’re ill. Kitties look very pleased with themselves though. I find Rayon slippery/sticky too - individual stitches seem sticky, but collectively they just slide off the needles. Viscose is much the same :( Lovely drape though, once you do get it finished.
Stasia - Thanks for the bulb info - we’ll probably give it a try. Seems silly to throw it out when, with a little care, we might be able to preserve it and get it to grow again. Of course if that works, we’ll have to name it :)
I had to go and look up the Neti Pot, but admit it sounds interesting. Myria was totally grossed out by the idea, but I think I minght be willing to give it a go :)
Pam - Thanks for corroborating the slippery/sticky thing - I thought I was going nuts! You’re right, once the stuff has been worked up, it makes a gorgeous and very “drapey” fabric :)
