Ominous Stripes

Here's the second Gypsy Girl barberpole sock. At first glance, those of you who remember the first sock might think this one is a match to it. It's not. When this one is done, I'll post a picture of the two socks side by side so you can see the differences.

But the good news is that it's close enough. I had enough leftover yarn from the first sock's skein to knit most of this leg. If you look closely, just to the left of the needles, right in the middle, you'll see a bit of a jagged jog in the black stripe. This is where I changed yarns to the second skein.

Changing yarns took, oh, about nine hundred hours.

Well. Yeah. That might be a slight exaggeration. But it took a long time.

The problem? I have knit and frogged the yarn in that second skein so many times -- double digit frogging, pulling from both the center and the outside -- that the skein was a tangly blob of technicolor jello.* Not so good for knitting, though oddly enough, it proves irresistable to both children and adults. Everyone who saw it wanted to unwind and rewind it. Several times, if I would let them. Which probably explains the tangles better than the frogging, come to think of it.

In desperation, after trying to knit from that mess yet again, I hauled out my swift and winder last night, skeined the yarn onto the winder, and wound a new neat ball.

That sounds so simple when you describe it like that. But it took almost exactly as long as two episodes of "Mad Men" on On Demand. Am I the only one addicted to this show despite the fact that there is not one single admirable character in the cast? They are all horrible awful people and I long for Don and Roger to spontaneously burst into flames. Then Red will light her cigarette from their smoldering remains and go have sex with a stranger. If they can pry her out of her sausage casing dress, that is.

Wait. Where was I?

I had to keep stopping the skeining process to detangle everything. And let's not forget, I have the world's worst ball winder. All it takes is the slightest stutter in the swift for the entire mount to come flying off the gears and go skittering across the room. At one point, the yarn was wrapped around and through the gears, tangled so badly that I thought only a scissors could save it. Or maybe a flamethrower. Either one.

So, what, about 90 minutes? Give or take. To wind off a ball of yarn, which is usually around a 3-minute process.

Knitting is fun, right? Right???

* Despite the repeated frogging, despite the constant handling, the yarn itself remains in pristing condition. It was only the ball that was a mess. I really do love this yarn. Really. Gypsy Girl rocks.