The observant among you may have noticed that I have a slight tendency toward absent-minded-professor-dom - i.e. that I frequently occasionally experience a tremendous little life-and-death struggle difficulty keeping up with the minutiae of daily life. The really crucial stuff does get done, somehow. I do get the dog walked and the animals fed; I haven’t so far missed enough major meals myself to make a real difference; my somewhat haphazard bill-paying and record-keeping habits haven’t yet resulted in my losing the house to foreclosure or dilapidation; and everything else gets squozen in somehow between swatches whenever I manage to remember that there is a world around me.

One of the more embarrassing outward manifestations of this syndrome pathology lifestyle is what The Boy^TM refers to as Floor Soup. Floor Soup is what happens when you have a big solid front door with a mail slot, a large front hall, and a tendency to lose track of what’s right in front of your nose until it becomes part of the landscape. Floor Soup is the mountain that accumulates if you resist becoming a daily slave to your junk mail. (Yes, that’s it - I’m not lazy and slovenly and undisciplined, I’m a noble freedom fighter against the oppression of unsolicited correspondence cheers cheers cheers! Um, yeah, right.) It doesn’t start as a mountain, of course. It is remarkably easy to ignore at first because the opening of the door shoves it out of the way. When it becomes an actual impediment to the movement of the door - well, that is when you wake up and remind yourself that it is neither nice nor normal and that if you don’t want to end up going the way of the Collyer brothers it is time to face the music and sort through the stuff and haul it away.

Hauling is what it takes, too. I bet that the money that could be saved by not sending junk mail to my house for a week would be enough to power and feed a small country for a year.

I don’t mind the hauling half as much as the sorting, though. THAT, I resent. It offends me that so much of my time and attention should be committed to this litany:

Catalogue - chuck. Catalogue - keep. Catalogue - chuck. Catalogue - chuck. Catalogue - chuck. Catalogue - chuck. Solicitation - chuck. Solicitation - chuck. Solicitation - chuck. Solicitation - chuck. Solicitation - chuck. Ad - chuck. Ad - chuck. Ad - chuck. Ad - chuck. Authors Guild Quarterly - keep. Opera News - keep. (Though when I’ll actually get around to reading either… well, never mind that.) Sports Illustrated - chuck (unless there’s a big guy on the cover with shoulder-pads and a helmet). Chuck. Chuck. Chuck. Chuck. Chuck. Chuck. Chuck. Keep. Chuck. Chuck. Chuck. Chuck. Chuck. Chuck. Chuck. Pay. Chuck. Chuck. Chuck. Chuck. Chuck. Read and chuck. Chuck. Chuck. Chuck. Chuck. Chuck. Chuck. Chuck. Chuck. Chuck. Chuck. Chuck. Chuck. Chuck. Chuck. Chuck. Chuck. Chuck. Chuck. Chuck….

But you gotta do it, not just for the bills (I deal with most of those on-line anyway, though I still cling to paper copies for corroboration, and if they do contribute to the problem I can assure you that their contribution is as the widow’s mite compared to the other stuff), but because every once in a blue moon there is actually a letter sandwiched in amongst the unbelievable masses of cheap newsprint and glossy advertisements - a ha’penn’orth of bread to this intolerable deal of sack - a Real Letter from a Real Person, addressed for Real Reasons to the Real Person that is me.

Thus it is that when I bragged the other day about my latest yarnanza (packages, of course, are in a whole different class) I did not realize that at about the same time I had received another very exciting item in the mail. It wasn’t until I steeled myself for Floor Soup duty yesterday that I discovered a modest little Real envelope containing this latest manifestation of the Power of the Internet Tubes.

I should have known it would be there. A little over a week ago I’d received an e-mail from reader LillianG. She had been going through back entries of the blog. She had a question about Rovaniemi technique; she also had a cluster of my favorite split-ring markers lying fallow, which markers she offered to send me.

O Brave New World!

I answered the question to the best of my ability; I offered to buy the markers. Of course you know what happened next. Lillian just up and sent them to me. How nice is THAT?

Many, many thanks, Lillian. You know I will put them to good use! and I hope you understand why I didn’t acknowledge them sooner….

Swatching the Car-Cozy

I promised you swatches; swatches you shall have.

Here’s how the Car-Cozy Yarn knits up:

These two look identical - but they’re not.

Same number of stitches. Same number of rows. Same needle. Same gauge.

Different purpose.

One is a stockinette gauge swatch. The other is a felting swatch.

Felts up a treat - a solid compact fabric with with a nice little fuzzy halo. This is the product of one cycle through the machine followed by a little vigorous hand-fulling. I think there may be a touch more shrinkage to be achieved here, but already we’re looking at a ratio of about 1.42:1 lateral, 1.35:1 vertical.

(Hey, wait a sec - isn’t that unusual? Don’t you usually get slightly more vertical than lateral shrinkage? Or has my brain twiddled it again? I’m too lazy to go back to my notes right now. Either it is or it ain’t.)

Want to do another set of felting swatches on bigger needles. These were done on my usual sock needles, US #1s (2.5mm), but to get a real sense of how the stuff felts I’m going to knit it up with a lot more air. Maybe a #7 or so, I figure. It’s a slightly finer yarn than I originally used for Swan Lake, but felting’s funny that way - you never know, it might actually work for that. It would certainly be very good for haberdashery projects like the Smoking Cap, if you wanted a fabric with a slightly velvety feel. (You do.)

And here’s how it knits up in the twist-stitch version of Kent Treble Bob Major:

Same gauge as Flock Sock, of course - I’d be surprised if it weren’t, because (except for the superwash factor) it’s the same fiber blend and the same spin at the same weight/yardage ratio.

As I said before, it doesn’t have the sheen of Flock Sock. Or the fabulous soft suppleness; the fabric it makes has a subtly more solid quality. Tsock yarn it ain’t - not by my tstandards. But for a tsweater… I’m liking it plenty. The stitch definition is still excellent. And the texture that I wouldn’t want in a sock becomes desirable rather than otherwise for a jacket/cardigan. I’m not planning to felt the piece, but I do want it to have a little of the feel, and some of the structural qualities, of a “boiled-wool” jacket - and I do want to steek it. (Not that I mind purling - much - but working all those twisted stitches on the wrong side could get old pretty quickly.) I adore the sock yarn; seduced by the way it swatched up I was fully intending to use it for this project. But in those respects it wouldn’t have given me what I was looking for; this fortuitous yarn will. Who knoo?

Life really is what happens while you are making other plans, isn’t it. A good thing, too, sometimes.

More Yarn Slave bounty in today’s mail, and every item has a story.

Here’s the whole package, immediately after exploding on impact. (who, me, eager?)

In no particular order….

This

was a special request. I asked for Toasted Almond, and by gum Toasted Almond is what I got! Chicken/Egg rating: on this one the idea came first, and then Jennifer brought it to life in the dye pot. It’s going to be another of my infamous Birthday Blobs, so I can’t tell you any more about it right now. But the birthday in question is close upon us, and after the reveal the design will be reincarnated as a sock kit, so you’ll be seeing this colorway again, I’m happy to say. I’m heroically setting the yarn aside for now - no casting on until Turandot is done, after which it will be a Rush Job, I mean Rush Blob. (But it’s already sketched and swatched, so all I need to do is plug in a few numbers and knit knit knit. It’ll be done in time. Just.)

This

is something you’ve seen twice before. Most recently I showed it to you in the dye pot…

… but you also saw it last March, in its former life

as Blackjack Taffy. Jennifer had to drop this colorway from her line because of production problems, so she made serious lemonade out of the remaining slightly-defective skeins by overdyeing them with blue; and thus the limited-edition Afterthought was born. It kills me to think how long I’m going to have to wait before knitting this up! Kathe Hannauer scored a skein or two of it too, and I gather she has some fabulous striping action to show for it, though I’m still, ahem, waiting to see a picture….

And speaking of making lemonade… if you read Jennifer’s blog and/or Astrid’s blog (and while you’re there, DO check out the lovely things Astrid is doing with the bamboo blend - same yarn I showed you the other day in Turandot Blue and Sandstone, but Damselfly is off and running in a whole ‘nother direction, color-wise), you already know about the Knitting Goddess’s cruel sense of humor. Seems there was some kind of a screwup at the mill, and the recent very big shipment of FlockSock base yarn turned out to be a very big shipment of NotFlockSock base yarn. (Not to quote myself yet again - it was in fact Jennifer who on discovering this told me that all she could think was “my black toner turned magenta!”)

There is a big difference between 75/25 Superwash/Nylon and 75/25 non-Superwash/Nylon.

How big?

This big:

As part of the What-the-Hell-Do-We-Do-NOW process, Jennifer sent me a hunk of it to try out. When you have that many HUNDREDS of pounds of lemons, you wanna have some pretty good lemonade recipes. Yes, the yarn could be returned, but the hassle and headaches attendant on that process are such that, pending the arrival of replacement FlockSock Stock, we are seeking a path of less resistance for this stuff. After all, sometimes the best things happen by accident. Can’t rule out the possibility that Someone Is Trying To Tell Us Something.

The first thing they’re evidently trying to tell us is that actually - once you get over the shock of it not being what you ordered and paid for - this is some damn nice yarn. Granted it doesn’t have quite the sheen of FlockSock, and of course it does felt (which is why until we figure out a name and application for it I am referring to it, based on Jennifer’s initial suggestion of what we could make out of it, as Car-Cozy Yarn) - but you can’t hold that against it as long as you’re not trying to make machine-washable Art Socks. It’s a soft fingering weight, with good knit-feel and excellent stitch definition. (Haven’t finished swatching yet, let alone felting or blocking & shooting, but will try to do so for next post.) I’m thinking it could be a winner for something like the Belshazzar’s Nemesis cardigan. Which I was strongly tempted to steek anyway, so maybe that is what Someone Was Trying To Tell Me. (I’m brave enough for a lot of things, but I’m not sure that steeking superwash is one of them.)

And I’m intrigued by the way it takes color.

The above skein was dyed before Jennifer had fully realized what had happened, so of course she hadn’t made any adjustments in the chemistry of the dye bath to allow for the differences in the fibers. Still, it’s kind of astonishing (to me, anyway) that this

was produced using the exact same formula. The yarns aren’t that different, are they?

Um, yeah, evidently they are. Wow.

Of course, there’s no reason you can’t make the necessary adjustments and produce the same shade of “Garnet” in the Car-Cozy Yarn. But again, sometimes the coolest things happen by accident. I wouldn’t have had the first idea how to ask for the color this new skein turned out to be… but I may have to find a way. There’s a design hiding in there, I can just feel it.

And speaking of same color/different yarns… some of you may have observed that the Kitri Shawl Progress Indicator has been kind of… stalled lately. As in, hasn’t budged for about a month.

Not for lack of interest. Not even for lack of time. For lack of - guess it’s time to come clean - yarn. (Hey, I said it was a Yarn Hog.) And furthermore, for lack of shawl.

Back when I was telling you about our dye adventures up at the farm, I don’t think I showed you this picture, did I.

The slip of yarn in the lower right hand corner is the three-yard sample I had the effrontery to send Jennifer back in May, which is when I first began to realize how vastly I had miscalculated. I say “effrontery” because when Jennifer gave me the original skein she made no promises about being able to reproduce the color - it was one of her dye-process by-products, and we both figured it might be conducive to the making of a Kitri shawl prototype, on the clear understanding that when the time came the production color would be close but not necessarily identical.

Leave it to me to need something identical.

So many attempts, so close, so no-cigar. So too-orange. So too-blue. Then at last, after an embarrassingly long stretch of mutual memory-jogging, we remembered that the original skein had been a use-up-the-dye-bath offshoot from… that same Garnet Sock Yarn. From that point on we were (and by “we were” I mean “she was,” because all I did was wind skeins and scratch my head in doubt) at least on the right track. Even then, though, it took some serious doing.

The still-wet skein in the middle of the picture was the most successful effort to date - until it dried. (The one on the left was a dry runner-up from the previous day.) Which it did on the day I took off for home, reluctantly leaving the whole shawl hostage in Jennifer’s clutches because she still was not satisfied with the match.

She was right, of course.

And look what she’s done now.

Look more closely:

Bloody miraculous.

I’d stopped knitting when I still had enough left for 1-1/2 pattern reps, figuring that would give me leeway for blending old with new in alternate pairs of rows if necessary. I don’t think it’ll be necessary. I may do it anyway, though, just as a matter of policy. (See under: Knitting Goddess, Not Inviting Wrath Of.)

Of course I mustn’t spend any serious time on it until Turandot and the Almond Rush Blob are done… but still, I’m happy to have my baby albatross back, I must say.

We polygamous process-knitters need all the WIPs we can get, you know.

… and a round dozen of the other. The assorted shrapnel of the week’s events to date.

Actually, not sure I have the full six - but I’m quite sure about the dozen, so let’s start with that.

The other day (while in frustrated pursuit of pearls for the coral swatches - NEVER try to buy faux pearls in late June!) I finally came across these:

Kids’ plastic beads - the alpha ones are common enough, but until recently I’d never seen the numeric ones in the craft stores around here. Not that I’d looked very urgently, but I did want them so I could make these:

Ooops. Just noticed that I’ve got some of the numbers turned wrong way ’round. Drat.

Not exactly stitch markers, as such. They’re bell markers! for cabled change-ringing patterns. To be used like this:

This may turn out to be more of a nuisance than it’s worth, but I doubt it - I really think it’s going to be useful to have a way of keeping track of which bell is which as the piece gets longer. Otherwise you’d be constantly tracing each path back to the beginning, or recalculating positions… or you’d be totally chained to the chart. We shall see. Not immediately, but after all time does fly, and before you know it I’ll need to be working on The Nine Tailors (the club sock for October). And call me crazy (it isn’t anything I haven’t heard before), but I am actually hoping to get Belshazzar’s Nemesis done in time for Rhinebeck - which is why there are 12 markers. Hey, you gotta dream big. And it pays to be prepared. And I am a past master at creative procrastination; if I wasn’t working on what I was supposed to be working on, at least I was working on something useful and necessary!

They’re pretty crudely made (I actually own three pairs of jeweler’s needle-nose pliers - it’s a sad commentary that I felt triumphant because I managed to locate one of them…), but they’ll do the job.

Lever-style ear-wire to hook into the stitch and latch closed; the three beads strung on an eye-pin that is then clipped short and bent back into the hole of the bottom bead (sort of…) to keep it from snagging on the yarn. I suppose there will be some snagging anyway. I’ll deal.

That’s my dozen. Let’s see about the six.

1. Six swans a-swimming. Saw the cygnets again late last night, swimming with their parents. My neighbor was right - there are indeed four! Maybe I should name them: Odette I, Odile I, Odette II, and Odile II…. (Though of course all of them are a uniform dull grey at the moment.)

   

   Workin’ on it. Progress is being made, I do assure you.
    

2. Purple cobwebweght update. The cone has gone on a diet, with impressive results.

   
   Hah! For once I have a Before picture!

   I’ve divested myself of a little over half of it so far, making the whole purchase seem a bit less ridiculous. I’ve also done a little swatching:

   

   Garter stitch on US #7s, partly as a goof and partly because Jennifer and I have been chatting lately about the idea of a Victorian “cloud.” This would do the job beautifully.

   

   Maybe with something a little more defined than garter stitch, just to keep one from dying of monotony - but the openness of the fabric almost speaks for itself.

   

   The beginnings of a lace motif (for a different project) - still wide open even on US #0s. I don’t think I’ve ever knitted anything quite this fine before. There is a dreamy, hypnotic quality to handling it, almost impossible to describe. Knitting in a trance.
    

3. Then there’s this:

   

   It’s a Lichtenberg figure, and not for a moment do I doubt that you’ll see exactly why I’m interested in it and what it’s doing here.
    

4. Now, about them pussycats. Sometimes a picture still needs a few words, if not necessarily a thousand. I probably should have captioned the sequence to clarify that it begins with cuddling and progresses through mutual grooming to all-out wrassling. That last shot isn’t a snuggle - it’s a proper knock-down-drag-out, kittens red in tooth and claw. As good as a circus, too.

   Also - looks like I had my superstition-strategy backwards. No sooner did I post that story than I got an e-mail from Lauren telling me that Morgan had just been accepted at the shelter! I don’t know whether they offer any follow-up info on placement, but will try to find out.
    

5. Update on the mystery yarn from yesterday. I asked Helen for further details and she told me it had been given to her about 3 years ago, that it was already knotted that way when she got it - and that it was the giver who mentioned Noro. But that was already second/third-hand, so it’s anybody’s guess whether there’s any basis for it or not.

   I’m re-thinking the wool content, because a quick-and-dirty hand-fulling attempt (hardly an acid test, but indicative at any rate) led to nothing but a tangle -

   

   - with no apparent change at all in the fibers or their relationship. So maybe the “felting” effect was really just the slight halo on the strands sticking together a bit in close quarters?

   Also, Clara over at Knitters’ Review thought it looked hand-painted. My bad. If I’d shown close-ups of some of the color transitions…

   

   

   

   … it would have been easier to see why I’m pretty sure it was dyed in the fiber before spinning.

   (Oh, and Helen? No, I didn’t measure yardage. I don’t usually bother to do it the hard way because I’m spoiled - too used to calculating based on weight and known metric specs. Obviously that’s not an option here, so I’ll haul out the skein again and do some counting later on….)

    

That’s not exactly six, is it - it’s either five or maybe 10, depending on how you count the swans. But… it’s still a miscellaneous list - and it’s what I’ve got. It’ll do.

Today’s show features a Mystery Guest.

A couple of days ago, as you know, Friday Done Come on a Tuesday. Somehow, I can’t imagine how (never never never underestimate, etc….), Helen had figured out that I was likely to arrive bearing gifts - so she made it a point not to show up empty-handed herself. (Quite unnecessary, of course, as I don’t think of us as being on a strict tit-for-tat basis - but it’s an ill wind that blows no good, and I’m certainly not complaining.)

Here’s what she gave me:

Cool, huh?

The question is… what is it?

It has been marinating in Helen’s stash for long enough that she herself is not sure now, if indeed she ever was. You know how it is. Sometimes the denizens of the stash arrive there under cover and are disguised by strange fumes and clouds of confusion, and when you regain consciousness you wonder vaguely, how did that get there? is that my stash? something has changed, and I’m not sure what….

She thinks it’s Noro, and the evidence seems to bear out that impression - but Noro what?

During its marination it has made repeated self-felting attempts, so evidently there is at least some wool content. But there’s definitely something else in there. Let’s take a closer look.

It was wound pretty tight, so I thought I’d invite it to relax and put its feet up; I decided to skein it in the hope of getting better acquainted. There’s a lot of it - half a pound - and of course the inner layers produced yarn-barf like crazy. But eventually it did all wind nicely around the swift.

It’s a more-or-less fingering-weight single -

Look! I washed the scale rule! Just for you!

- rough-spun, though, with some variations in thickness. This is perhaps the most extreme:

I’ve never actually worked with Noro myself, but of course I’ve read about it and seen pictures. I’d say the colors…

… are certainly consistent with Noro. So are…

…the unabashed knots… right?

I did a burn test:

Inconclusive. There’s evidently some synthetic content - it does melt slightly as it approaches the flame. It does burn, and continues to burn steadily on its own when removed from the flame. It smells both a little woolish and a little nylon-ish to me. Residue is black, with a rough partially-melted feel but no actual beading at all.

I haven’t yet made an active attempt to felt it; but I do have Helen’s report to go on as to its tendencies - that and the fact that its fibers clearly want to cling to each other.

It do skein up rather pretty, don’t you think?

You know my methods, Watson - this is not the kind of thing I usually work with. But I have to say… it intrigues me. For what? No idea, yet. Point is, I’m grateful to Helen, not only for the gift, but for the mind-opener. Never let it be said I clung to the beaten track - not even if it’s my own chosen path.

Besides, who can resist a mystery?

So - anybody? Does it look familiar?

ETA: Based on the flow of the color sections my overall impression is that this yarn was dyed in the fiber before spinning, rather than hand-painted after.

 
On another colorful note - I keep forgetting to mention this, but I think I’m starting to get the hang of this color balance business: at any rate I think that in the last post about the coral yarn the color is pretty damn accurate. Of course, YMMV (Your Monitor May Vary) - but it looks right to me.

Today is yet another birthday. (And thick and fast they came at last, and more, and more, and more.)

The birthday boy is that mysterious shadowy figure whom I refer to as my son, even though his identity remains so vague - he may be Tibor Szégy-Légy, or he may be Gus Norbeck, or in an ectoplasmic sort of way he may even be Allan Janus hisself; it’s all very confusing, and what’s a mother to do? At any rate, whoever he may be, he hangs out over at Panabasis, along with our old friend Archie and the other denizens of the Janus Museum; and whoever he may be, his birthday gift is The Green Blob - along with his Mum’s blessings.

If you follow Panabasis at all, then you probably already know that Tibor and Gus and Allan, whatever they may say about each other, all share one special trait: a fondness for interesting headgear. Some time ago Panabasis featured a fearfully wistful and moving item about smoking caps. Well, thinks I… I bet I could do something like that. And for a while I seriously considered paraphrasing the very handsome cap shown there, as worn by Bob Hoskins in Cousine Bette, or the excellent one available from James Lock Hatters. But seeing as Gus had already acquired a Kufi and Tibor had threatened to do the same, I decided to try for a little diversity; I cast about for a different model.

I settled at last on this as a guideline for dimensions. I knew the drape and feel would be quite different, since I was working in felt and the original was velvet - but I liked the idea of a fez-like size and shape, with the scope that it would offer for, um, whimsical decoration.

I think it was a good choice. Here’s my version:

Gentleman’s Smoking Cap

Originally I was going to make my cap out of the same dark red stuff I’d used for Archie, but for this purpose I wasn’t quite satisfied with the way it swatched and felted. So I took a stash dive, and unexpectedly turned up a good-sized ball of ancient dark green handspun, the last remnant from a sweater I’d made in another life for my ex-husband. (Which sweater is another story; if I ever find pictures from that bygone era, I’ll tell it.) And knew This Was It. And then, as if further proof were needed, came the miracle of the matching lining fabric. (See under: Horse, Gift; Mouth, Not Looking In.) Decision made.

As you may have noted the other day, I started with my favorite medallion top, adding a spoke to make a star/flower shape; then turned the corner and worked two lace patterns down the sides. Regular readers of Panabasis will not need to think twice about my reasons for choosing “Janus” and “Cat’s Paw.”

The felted-lace thing may require some explanation, though. Invented or unvented, I’m not sure which, but I stumbled across this technique by chance when I made the original Swan Lake boots - because I’d hand-felted most of my swatches I hadn’t realized at first how thoroughly the real fulling process was going to close the eyelets, more or less defeating the purpose of the lace altogether. So I regrouped and decided to use the vestigial holes as embroidery guides, which had two consequences - it gave me a reliable base for even embroidery, and it allowed me to “sink” the stitches into the fabric, which made for a nice embossed effect. Oh, sorry, three consequences - it also looked wicked cool; at least I thought so. So I’ve taken it a step further, in a couple of different directions. I now thread nylon cord through the holes before fulling to make sure they won’t get lost entirely; and I’m a little selective as to which holes I actually use, and which ones I connect to which. Here is the victim, trussed for its ordeal:

Of course I forgot (don’t I always?) to take Before pictures of the lace as knitted. “Cat’s Paw” is pretty standard - I used one of the six-hole versions (not my preference as a rule, but it works well as a base for embroidery). As for “Janus” - here (with more acknowledgments than ever to Barbara G. Walker II) is what it looks like knitted:

and here’s my chart for working it:

… and here it is after fulling, selectively embroidered with simple double lines of chain stitch, worked in gold silk:

Other details:

Crown

Crown, Center Detail

Edge and Lining

Hand-knotted Tassel

And here The Boy^TM demonstrates that, hey, what do you know, the cap fits him too (he also bats his eyelashes to remind me that he too, ahem, has just had a birthday).

He wants one. So does Lauren.

Guess I’d better start shopping for more of that gold silk cobwebweight….

Late-Breaking Smoking Cap Coverage!

This just in! Reportage of the Smoking Cap in situ:

I guess this answers the question of just whose birthday it is. (Or whose photo-op, anyway.) Tibor, with a trace of the green-eyed monster in his delivery, relays this from Gus (can you see why I have difficulty keeping track, here?):

Here ’tis - as you see, it fits fine. I’m experimenting with different ways of wearing it - cocking it well back zouave-style, centered in the classic Orthodox priest fashion, or off to the side with a dashing 30 mission crush, as shown here. Oh, it’s the jolliest cap!

I think I can tell which style is which… sort of. And I must say, no matter what Tibor may think - that there Gus, he is a fine, dashing fellow, after all. (And so is Leroy, with that elegant tail. Can’t wait to see how he looks modeling the Smoking Cap.)

Anyway, happy birthday, Sonnele, whoever you are!

(…. and my apologies to Mrs. Calabash….)

What have we here?

After 10 Super-Hot cycles in a row… this, my friends, is the Cleanest Pillowcase On Long Island.

Except, of course, for the odd clump of felted-wool-lint detritus in its seams and corners.

And now if you’ll excuse us, the swatch-felting is all done for now, so the Pillowcase is retiring to its well-earned rest, while I - I have papyri to knit before I sleep.