But Will He Like the Flecks?*

These really got to be a slog in the end, but it's good to know that some of my holiday knitting is finished before the end of July.

Pattern: a variation on my regular stockinette
Yarn: Knit Picks Essential Tweed (65% superwash merino, 25% nylon, 10% donegal), colorway Flint, two skeins
Needles: two 12" US 1 (2.5 mm) Addi Turbo circs
Started/Completed: July 23/July 31
Recipient: my father-in-law

Mixed feelings about these, really. They were easy to knit and therefore fast (heck, almost the entire foot of the first sock was completed during a screening of Mamma Mia!), and as I said, it's nice to be able to get some obligation knitting done early.

That said, I wasn't wild about the yarn. The yarn base itself is nice enough, but the donegal "flecks" drove me a little batty. This yarn is basically the normal Essential, but it looks like little bits of loose fiber were thrown in as it was being spun, and very few of them were well spun in. Many are loose enough that they can be pulled out, and I did just that frequently as I was knitting. Had these flecks been a little longer and been really spun into the yarn, I might not have minded as much.

I really think that calling this yarn a tweed is a misnomer; it's not a true tweed, and it doesn't have that wonderful sense of dimensions that you get with a yarn that is a real tweed. I'm really not sure why I bought this yarn in the first place -- worse, I have two more skeins of it in the stash! I'm hoping that it's not too far out there for my father in law, who's a little more adventurous in his choice of color in clothing than some men I know. (The Mister has already nixed the idea of using the two remaining skeins for socks for him; he doesn't do flecks.)

The good sock-knitting news is that, having done the two pairs for the dads, I've cast on another pair for me, in some yummy cranberry-colored Araucania Rancho.

Delicious, no? This is the beginning of some Merino Lace Socks from IK/Favorite Socks. In spite of the fact that I'm knitting on size 0 (2.0 mm) needles, it's a lot of fun -- I suspect it has to do with the fact that I'm knitting something other than stockinette for a change.


*At last night's bonus fifth-Wednesday Hurricane Knitters knit night, some of us had a discussion about men's preferences when it comes to yarn and how very few men seem to care for tweeds. All the men we know prefer solids (or even heathers, in some instances) to anything with "flecks." If only we had a man like Jared to knit for!