First, thanks for all of the helpful comments about the blog weirdness. I’m glad the page doesn’t look completely broken to you. It seems that earlier versions of IE have issues with my theme, and one of my plugins trips an error message in some browsers. I’m going to do something about the plugin… soonish.

Knitting is barely happening lately. I’ve been totally eclipsed by the other knitting members of my lab group. Let’s see… there’s been some work on another blue thing in leftover Cascade Pima Tencel. Remember all of the rude things I said about Pima Tencel? I take some of them back. SOME of them. It still sheds, it still pills. But if you make something with it that you intend to hand-wash only, it does what it’s supposed to.

Plus, it has this… sheen. It picks up light in a fascinating way, just like Caron Simply Soft. That’s right, I just complimented a yarn for capturing the lustrous quality of a Wal-Mart acrylic. Caron Simply Soft is the king of acrylics. I made my very first sweater in “Dark Sage”, and someday I’ll make myself an entire bathrobe in it.

Moved by the siren’s call of weird yarny shine (and all of my own awkward rhetoric about Simply Soft), I went on a really short acrylic binge last weekend. I’m all stupid over the SnB Happy Hooker “Short N Sweet” pattern, and I thought that perhaps I could get away with some kind of soft, shiny acrylic. My selection: a deep desert whorehouse orange shade of Red Heart Soft, to make the whole damn sweater in a mere two skeins. Well. Red Heart Soft has some fine vibrant colors, but it is no Caron Simply Soft. I crocheted a few rows, and it looked almost ok, but it felt like one of those squeaky afghans my mom keeps in the basement.

I’m auditioning other stash yarns for the project to stave off the temptation to just go buy some more Pima Tencel. Didn’t I talk the big talk about not buying it ever again? Aren’t there other fairly inexpensive cottony yarns out there that don’t shed and deserve my love? Sigh. The devil you know, I guess.