Knots and locks

While my husband meditates on his prospective sweater swatches and the meaning of the question, “Which do you prefer?” I’ve cast on the Roped Shell from the Summer 08 issue of Interweave Knits.

The navy blue yarn is Louet Euroflax in sport weight. The green yarn is Claudia’s Handpainted 100% linen. These are produced from the same base yarn, which is spun by Louet (this means that Claudia’s buys the yarn from them, and they dyes it to their colors, which are superb).

I haven’t worked with linen before. It almost feels waxy – like a giant strand of dental floss, with about at much stretch. Right now I’m switching back and forth between this and another project using Jaggerspun Zephyr, which is a 50/50 silk and wool blend. The Zephyr feels spongy by contrast! The linen yarn is 4 ply. I took a waste bit, separated out the plies, and tried unsuccessfully to break a single ply with my hands. Strong stuff. My swatch, however, washed up great. It looks fabulous and handles like all of the rest of the linen in my closet… which is not a small amount of linen. Good stuff, linen.

I’m totally happy with the Louet skein. The skein from Claudia’s, however, has some problems. It was skeined and tied very poorly, which meant that I had a difficult time winding it into a ball. Then, less than 10 yards into the skein, I found 3 knots! I can understand 1 knot… sometimes… but not in a premium yarn. Given what I paid for this yarn, I think that it is totally reasonable to take issue with this many knots. The markup on the yarn is almost 2x what the Louet-brand is selling for, but the quality is not as high. I really like the color, and I’m far enough into the project that I’ll just deal with it, but it might be a while before I buy anything from Claudia’s again.

(Yes, I did email the company. No, I haven’t heard anything back. I don’t really want a replacement, but an apology and/or a partial refund would be nice.)

I’m still having fun bicycling all over Austin. I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how many bike racks there are in town, especially at places like Costco. However, the racks at Costco leave a little something to be desired – namely, the ability to lock my bike to them! This type of lock has an arm that swings away from the rack. The arm has three spikes that are meant to go through the front wheel, the frame, and the back wheel, thus securing the most easily-stolen components in one fell swoop. You then use your own padlock to lock the swing arm in place. Nice idea. I can tell you, however, that a man thought this up.

How do I know that it was a man and not a woman who designed this thing? Because it won’t hold a woman’s bike! The swing arm won’t go through my frame at any angle. As you can see, I had to lock up with a cable lock – I can’t use my good U-bolt lock on this one when the swing arm isn’t fully engaged. Since my bike was still there when I got back, I suppose it’s the though that counts (and I am appreciative that they put in racks at all!). If anyone has any tips for securing a ladies’ bicycle to this style rack, I’d love to hear them.

Enough complaining for today. I’m going to take a nap.