the lint is everywhere

Yesterday, I cast on for Skew. I'm working my way up the foot right now. At the moment, I'm just alternating plain rows with increase/decrease rows, but can hardly wait to get to the heel. It looks like fun. I am using the really great Zauberball yarn for these. It has great colours and long repeats. Short colour repeats might be more interesting for Skew, but we'll see how it goes at the heel. I can always knit a second pair.

For Spoke--I have one sleeve finished and the other started. I'm alternating rows on this sleeve to mix the dye lots. They're so close that they are only really distinguishable in very strong light (and not at all in Starbucks, even though Starbucks has better light than my two favourite coffeeshops), but I want to avoid being discontented with the sweater.

I still really like Sedum, but if I ever knit it again, I will use different yarn. It stretches more than I'd prefer (that may be my gauge, though), and it sheds. By the theories of Chomsky, it sheds! Last time I washed it, after it was dry, I used one of those lint brushes that has the sticky paper you peel off. I peeled off a lot of sticky paper that evening. I had to lint brush the ironing board, where I'd blocked the sweater, after I hung it up. It sheds all over my clothes, and I find alpaca fibres everywhere now. When I'm wearing the sweater, sometimes I find myself with alpaca fibres getting into my mouth (not sure how that happens). And I am a person who has long hair that sheds like crazy (my husband has blamed my hair for a broken part on the vacuum that he had to replace), and because there is a lot of cloth and yarn in my home, I have a lot of lint floating around. And yet, the amount of lint coming off of this sweater seems truly extraordinary. I still like alpaca, but I think that inexpensive alpaca may not be the best way to go if you want a hard-wearing sweater. I'm going with a sturdy Briggs & Little wool for Spoke. It may have the occasional piece of vegetable matter, and it may be a little scratchy, but it does not shed.

The other day, I was knitting a dishcloth as a bus project. The cotton I grabbed from my bag happened to match my shirt rather well. I was coordinated! This is unusual, since I frequently wear socks that do not match my outfit and often pair my practical black waterproof shoes with my favourite pants, which are brown.