Hear That?

That's the sound of me tearing my hair out. Lifting her head from her academic/social crunch, Clare has given me some more information about the intended recipients of the Great Across The Pond Afghan Plan. I'm sure she didn't mean to confound me. The giftees are practical, eco-friendly - and concerned about dry-cleaning chemicals getting into groundwater and poisoning it.

Do you realize what this means? The afghan has to be machine washable (because who's going to hand-wash an afghan, right?). I have spent the entire weekend in a -- I thought, happily successful -- hunt for that rare and therefore precious commodity that is this yarn in this discontinued colorway. I received an email this morning that one of the only two shops that stock it had shipped enough yarn to get my sadly meager 920 "I think I can squeeze an afghan out of this if I fudge the stripes" yards to a comfortable 1472 "whew that gives me 128 yards for a margin for error" yards. While this meant I would be alternating skeins in an attempt to fudge the dye-lot issue, I was so relieved that I stopped looking for fuzzy, multi-colored, attractive, wool acrylic blends.

I could of course, as Clare suggested, wash The Swatch. You may have thought there was a rational mind behind this blog. Let me disabuse you. I feared to test The Swatch. I knew I would lose it to felting. I regarded The Swatch with a deep sense of foreboding - not only would the yarn felt, I would reach the end of the afghan and be short that exact, crucial amount. That these two circumstances are mutually exclusive was beside the point; if the yarn felted, surely I wouldn't be using it for this afghan. I was not, however, in the mood to allow a trivial consistency to be the hobgoblin of my little mind. I abandoned The Swatch and started another Baby Surprise Jacket.

If I'm going to snatch myself bald-headed, I might as well do it to a purpose. Besides, I need something to distract me while I send The Swatch through the washer.