You know the giant, 1,750 yard skein of Katahdin I bought at MDSW to make a sweater with?
I've been knitting away at the giant sweater. At our last knit night, I tried to spread it out to show people. That's when I noticed a hole. A HOLE. I tried not to flip out and lurched for stitch markers to contain the exposed loops.
It appears that the yarn simply frayed. I looked online for a fix and decided not to try to unknit and graft garter stitch (though maybe I should have). Instead, I took this approach and just mended it with sewing thread, taking care to catch lots and lots of strands of yarn, moving in lots of directions. The result isn't especially great, but at least it's not a hole. I moved on.
I thought maybe I had snagged the fabric taking it in or out of the basket I have been working from.These baskets have some loose pieces, like this - but this isn't especially sharp or hard.
To be on the safe side, I relocated the piece to a plastic bin that is completely smooth, and kept knitting. As I was knitting from my giant ball, I came to the end of it. You know how you can be surprised that you've come to the end of your yarn, because the ball is in a little project bag or something that hides it? That's what this was like - but there was still a lot of ball left in the bag. The break didn't look frayed. Hmmm.
I rejoined the yarn, this time working from the outside of the ball. Soon I came to a very frayed section, which I had to cut out. I rejoined.
Then came another break. I rewound the rest of the ball by hand and found a couple more breaks. What what WHAT?!???
I'm worried I've got some kind of insect, but I see no other signs of one. The yarn was in one piece when I wound it from the skein into a cake on my ball winder in June or July. Something has happened in the interim.
Please share your thoughts, even the worst ones. I need to move through this.
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Well, crap! I only have one similar experience but it was traumatic. I knit a pair of socks from some yarn I had purchased on etsy. I noticed a few frayed/broken/"chewed" spots, but knit merrily on. About two weeks after I finished the socks I got them out of my sock drawer to wear and found many holes. By then I began to suspect bugs, so I immediately quarantined the socks and the remaining yarn in a plastic bag and put it in the freezer. A few days later after I had recovered from feeling faint, I inspected the plastic bag and saw the bug that turned out to be a carpet beetle larval form. It's the only one I ever saw, but as a preventive measure our extension services told me to thoroughly vacuum EVERYTHING, put my stash yarn in plastic garbage bags and put it in the freezer for at least two weeks. Luckily my stash is not huge but I had two big chest freezers so that's what I did. Now all my yarn is stored in plastic bags inside of plastic bins, and I usually freeze new yarn for a few weeks just as a precaution. I sincerely hope that this is not your problem, but whatever it is, I hope you can get it controlled quickly. http://ipm.ucanr.edu/PMG/PESTNOTES/pn7436.html
ReplyDeleteI bundled the whole sweater (still on the needles) into a ziploc bag this morning, along with the remaining yarn and the small canvas bag that yarn was in. It's in my chest freezer now. But I quake when I think about all the wool in my living room (it's winter, so besides yarn, I have 3 blankets and 2 throws). And the yarn for this project was wound and kept in one room for a long time before moving into active mode in the living room. EEEEKKK! I don't have that kind of freezer space!
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