dud

This is a story about knowing when to give up on a yarn. The yarn is a simple, gray-brown, worsted-weight wool that I bought a few years back in Nepal with the intention of making a rustic sweater for Mountain Man. He still asks good naturedly about that sweater from time to time, and when I saw the Mr. Darcy sweater from the new Knitty, I knew it was time to cast on! I wound the first skein into a ball ...


And immediately started to get a little suspicious. The yarn had no integrity. It would tear apart under the slightest tension, and it left dunes of short fibers blowing across my desk.

I thought it might be wise to start with a smaller project, perhaps a felting project that could make up for the weakness of the yarn. I pulled out my new favorite knitting book, the amazing Alternknits Felt, and settled on the the smallest felted nesting box.


Here's my cat sniffing it disdainfully. What a dud !! Even with gentle hand-felting, the yarn practically disintegrated, leaving a felted fabric that was so thin in places that you could see right through it (you can see that on the left side of the picture, above).

The only saving grace is that the dog's standards aren't as high as the cats. While the cat sniffed this felted monstrosity and walked away, Isis at least gamely stayed around to give it a good bite.


Anyways, I feel like I've given this yarn my best try, but it was a complete and utter failure. I can finally give up on it. What do you think: compost? trash? give away? (I'm leaning towards compost, since I am not sure I want to inflict this horrid, dusty, falling-apart yarn on anyone else).