Oh crap.

I love knitting sweaters. I really do. But I hate knitting sleeves. Especially the second sleeve. It's like making mittens or socks but worse. Not only do I have to make two of them, I have to make two of them after making all the fun bits of the rest of the sweater. I know this is irrational. I could very easily make the sleeves first or separate them by making the sweater in between or make them two at a time. But it'll never happen. The sleeves must be made after the sweater. In my mind, that is the only logical possibility. So, I am left with the dreaded second sleeve. Which sometimes can mean that a sweater languishes in no man's land far longer than necessary.

This time, however, I have a more challenging problem. I am running out of yarn. I had 3 skeins of the stuff, which is plenty to knit a pullover in my size. It should have been fine. But for some reason (ahem, Honey) I decided to change my plans for the collar of the thing. I put on a shawl collar rather than my planned henley. It looks adorable but now I have this much sleeve:

And this much yarn:

(For reference, the Swiss Franc is about the size of the American quarter- definitely not enough yarn!)

Clearly I'm going to have to rip the collar for there to be enough yarn to finish the sleeve. But I don't want to believe this. In fact, it simply isn't true. If I knit faster, the yarn won't know what hit it and will magically stretch to the needed amount. It's a scientific fact. This is the converse black hole knitting effect. You know how you can knit for hours and hours and have no noticeable change in either the size of the ball of yarn or the sweater? This is the opposite. Knit at top speed, don't get discouraged and the sweater will grow, regardless of the amount of yarn left in the ball. This might be denial. But it's very well thought out and therefore must work.

Stringent Requirements Must Be Met ... Or Else.

I love sock yarn. I don't think that's a unique thing among people who love to knit. Sock yarn is the candy of yarns. It's colourful and inexpensive and just a little bit can really give you a sugar high. I read a fair number of knitting blogs but since most of them are in English, they mostly use American or occasionally English yarns. That's great. There's plenty of eye candy for me to ogle but even though they are very pretty yarns, I know that I'm probably never going to rush out to get my hands on them. I just don't want them. This might seem a little at odds with what I just said but I have very specific requirements for a good sock yarn and apparently I'm not running with the crowd.

My requirements for purchasing sock yarns are fairly straightforward.

1. Warmth (not the challenging one, handknit socks are generally very warm)
2. Breatheability (must have high natural fibre content so that my feet don't turn my shoes into containers for large puddles of sweat)
3. Durability (at least superwash wool, preferably some sort of poly in there, tightly spun)
4. Colour (not a big challenge, I love all colours)
5. Price (get out of the 10 -15 EUR range and it has to be a very special yarn indeed)

The sticking points, particularly with yarns from the US, are generally durability and price. The trend seems to be for squishy yarns that are more loosely spun and very gentle. The kind of yarns you would want close to your face or neck. When poking around etsy and other indie internet shops I find a lot of silk or alpaca or cashmere blends and they all sound lovely. They also sound like if I knit socks or any other high use garment out of them they would crumble into tiny bits. I want durable yarn. I want what I make to be usable for years. So I go for the tough stuff. Tightly wound German sock yarns like Regia, Trekking or Opal are my faves. I know that lots of knitters think that they are "ropey" and have no give when you knit with them but I've never found that to be a problem. I find them enjoyable to work with.

The thing about these kind of yarns though is the colours. I love a good self striping yarn. I really dig stripey socks and the fact that the yarn does the work for me is fantastic and also strangely mesmerizing. But I tend to knit a lot of sweaters out of sock yarn so I'm looking for a less clown vomit look usually. I totally love the hand-dyed lines that opal and trekking do and there are a bunch of great indie dyers working with those bases particularly in Germany. I mean, who wouldn't love this, or this, or this. As an added bonus they are in my price range. Win!

Tomorrow I'm going to talk about things I knit with sock yarn. And yes, mostly they're sweaters. I do lead an exciting life.