Last year, I ordered an offensive amount of Létt Lopi in the hopes of redeeming myself for what I will covertly call the "Schmapigan" disaster. I am sure I'm not the only person to fall deeply in love with a pattern on-line, order the requisite wool, knit about a mile worth of it, and come up feeling like I've been beaten with the mediocre stick.
Just ordering the pattern alone proved painful. Not only was it expensive, I was charged as much for the shipping as I was for the pattern. In this day and age of PDF files, PayPal accounts and laptops, ordering knitting patterns on-line is normally child's play. You pay, you download, you print. It was a sign that I should have quit while I was ahead.
Pattern finally in hand, I ordered the wool. Joseph Galler's Peruvian Tweed, quite honestly one of the most beautiful wools I have ever knit with. I am in love with my Lopi, but JG's Peruvian Tweed is like eating a steak after a year's worth of hamburger. It's wool, specifically alpaca, but it's different. And oh my, does it knit up beautifully! One day, I hope to come across more of it and make myself something I might actually wear. Each skein weighs a whopping 227g, that's a half a pound, and measures 600 yards. That's a whole lotta wool in one skein.
That's the background on how the Þel came to be. Here was a pattern in one of my Lopi books that just might redeem me. I ordered 2 bags of brown Lopi, and got busy knitting. 1600 metres later, the Þel was born. I have to mention my dear friend Elaine in there as well. 'Twas Elaine who got busy sewing the sleeves in, in return for me sewing in 2,716 ends on a precious baby cardigan Elaine had knit, as well as sewing on grosgrain ribbon for the button band, and finishing the buttons. (I like that fiddly stuff - especially if I didn't knit it myself). Knitters are charitable like that. At some point, you just get so involved with a particular project that you just can't deal with it any more. That's when good friends step in and say, "here, let me knit that back for you", when you've made a mistake and don't have the heart to pull back a few rows of lace, for example. Sometimes, emotional detachment is required to successfully finish a particular project. In the end, I handed Elaine both sleeves and the body, and Elaine did the rest. There was a lot riding on the success of the Þel. Again, I folded it, put it on top of the dryer in the laundry room and forgot about it. Popina was happy though, to have a nice, cushy warm place to nap. Lopi's forgiving like that, though. This stuff repels everything - dirt, pet hair, you name it. It's virtually indestructible.
The other day, I thought it would be best to take the Þel to task, and finally wash and block it. I soaked in Eucalan for a bit, squeezed it out until I was satisfied it was clean, rolled the whole thing up and chucked it in the washer for a quick spin-dry. The wool is so magical is came out of the washer practically dry. I slapped it down on the slate patio, straightened it out, and with the warmth of the sun and the slate, it was dry in about an hour. You'd never attempt something like that with normal wool. But Lopi's not normal - it's super-wool. Of course Popina attacked it as it was drying, and it goes without saying Cooper had a nap on it, too.
But it's all good, because in the end, the Þel is everything I hoped it would be, and more:
