A mystery

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Just wanted to share photos from last winter of JCH (see 25Nov07 post) washed and blocking. I soaked it in some Eucalan no-rinse wool wash, gently squeezed out excess water and laid it flat on these mats I got at Costco for about $12 (eight 24" squares). You can see an example of how I use the mats here. I love them! I recently saw a package of "kid" colored mats there. I only pinned out the earflaps.

This is what the hat looked like after its bath. The yarn is 100% wool and the dangling bits were starting to "stick" together in a bad way, so I pried the 3 strands apart and then braided it partway down. Guess I shouldn't be surprised about that happening since it's 100% wool.

I found a little candy jar to prop the hat on for these shots.

Here's the surprising part. When I looked inside the hat, I found the yarny ends from tying the pompom to the top of the hat! Wow, that was sloppy of me. Guess I forgot to weave them in or snip them shorter. That didn't seem to bother DH though.

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A couple of months ago, V stopped by with a bag of yarn that she inherited from her MIL. In this bag I found this WIP and some balls of the same yarn. The WIP looks like a (horseshoe) lace shell, it's mostly rectangular with some armhole shaping at the top. From what I can gather, her MIL was a very skinny woman. I don't know whether this is supposed to be the front side or the back side, but regardless, this top would never fit me. Anyhow, I started to frog this piece and rewind the yarn into a ball.

Besides her MIL being skinny, I'd also guess that her favorite way to join yarn was to tie the two ends together. I found several of these as I frogged the piece. I don't know how long this shell has been sitting around, it might have been years. The yarn was very curly/crinkly. I wonder how long it will take for the yarn to "relax".

There were some stains on the WIP, probably from sitting around in a dark corner for aeons. In retrospect I wonder if I should have washed it before frogging. Oh well, too late now. I think I'll just have to knit with it and then wash it.

When I finished frogging/rewinding, I ended up with 3 balls of varying sizes. I don't have a scale to weigh each ball. Could the largest be one skein's worth? I can't be absolutely sure, the largest one seems to be heavier than one skein. Wish I had a scale. The other two don't seem to add up to the same size as the largest one (I'm eyeballing it here). Very confused...

About this blue yarn ... I have absolutely no idea what kind of yarn this is. From the thinness, I'd say it is fingerling weight. All I have to go by is the name Panda. I did a yarn search on Rav and came up with nothing.

What I know/guess:
-- Panda is either the maker of the yarn or the name of the yarn
-- Japanese yarn
-- Fingerling weight
-- Skeins come in 25 gm
-- Content is 70% of one thing and 30% of something else

Unfortunately I can't read Japanese to figure out the rest (click on pics to enlarge). Anybody have any ideas?

What I want to know:
-- General info about yarn.
-- Fiber content? (acrylic? cotton? nylon? ...)
-- Yardage per skein (so I can get a feel for how much total yardage I have)
-- Yarn wight? (fingerling?)
-- Care instructions
-- What kind of projects this yarn is best suited for

Lessee, not much else going on here. I can't take pics of my other knitting until I weave in ends on one and seam up the other. As simple as these tasks are, I am very good at procrastinating when it comes to weaving/seaming. Perhaps I'll have photos of those items next time. Here's a little closeup of one of them. Can you guess what it is? Hint: it's something I haven't made in a loooooong time.

I really haven't done much knitting lately. Much of my free time has been consumed by reading -- both printed & audio flavors -- and also by Wii games. I really love DDR and have discovered that it's easier to place the game mat on top of the same foam mats I use for blocking my knits. This makes a big difference compared to playing directly on hardwood floor. When I'm not playing DDR, I'm working on my golf swing. We upgraded to Tiger Woods 2010 with the MotionPlus thing. WOW! That motion addon really changes the way this game is played compared to the 2009 version. Now I can't imagine playing without it. DH is much better at golf than I am. I'm still learning how to play better, haven't tuned by clubs yet, and hope to someday become good enough to try playing online with others.




On the book front... I had mentioned reading Acqua Alta last time. Well, I'm still chipping away at it. I got sidetracked by the Sookie Stackhouse series which several people have turned me on to. I finished Dead Until Dark (book1), a quick easy read, and will go pick up Living Dead in Dallas (book2) later today. I can't help but notice the parallels between this series & the Twi series. So far I like Sookie more than Bella, and I like Edward more than Bill. There's something disturbing about Bill, I haven't quite put my finger on it. Ok, I guess I just don't like him. Perhaps I'll have a better opinion of him when I read the 2nd book.

I must thank all my readers for helping to identify the Japanese Honeysuckle in my yard (see 24Jun09 post). I really can't complain despite it being a weed or invasive species. It looks and smells lovely. But I'll will hack away at it without guilt and push it back some. And thanks to one of my anonymous readers, I also learned something about peach trees! :-)

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