Monday, July 17, 2006

Chenille Nightmare: Worming Purple People Eater!


Serves me right for straying into acrylic, but it was so soft! And so Purple! And so readily available at the hardware store in town!
I knit this eggplant/grape hat for a donation (read about it here) out of Lion's Brand Purple Chenille, because it was so deliciously eggplant color. Near the end of the hat, I noticed big stitches or big loops appearing where no big stitches had appeared before. I don't remember dropping stitches, or knitting large tangles like they weren't there, and I am a tight knitter, so its not like I created loose loose stitches that could have wiggled into big coils. So I washed and dried it, hoping erroneously that blocking was the answer to my acrylic woes. (It never is. Wool loves me back! Wool is alive!) What I got instead was even more loose loops! What is going on?!?!? Are you supposed to only knit chenille partnered with something else to hold onto it? Is this some sick way the acrylic camp makes you buy 2 skeins, a chenille and a holder companion? I vaguely recall Wendy telling me that Chenille "worms" something awful. I always thought this meant that the ends wouldn't stay woven in, but would wiggle their way out. Could she have meant that all the strands in the entire knitted piece wiggle about and get caught in cul-de-sac loops? It makes me nervous to think of worming strands wiggling and looping of their own accord. Especially atop a baby's head! Oh the horror! It really is alive!
This monster is fated to have it's leaves cut off and grafted onto another (cotton!) hat, and the rest of it will be frogged. Then I think it, and the other 2 partial chenille skeins I have moldering in the stash, need to be donated to an acrylic-loving fake-lei crocheter somewhere in my town. Yech!

Update: From Comments:
Stilaholic Nartian knits said...
Isn't there a disclaimer on the Lion Brand website that their chenille's not recommended for knitting?

Oh-My-Gawd! Immediate search of Lion Brand website ensued and found this:
Knit: Product is not recommended for knitting
GRRRRRRR! After some frogging, maybe I will finally teach myself to crochet.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Isn't there a disclaimer on the Lion Brand website that their chenille's not recommended for knitting? (It may be their suede though.)

In any case, even for crochet projects, the chenille's a squeeky tough piece of work. It took all I had to finish crocheting the kiddie hat & scarf I made out of it. I still have some leftover I need to donate to some charity somewhere.

Kel said...

Crap. Really? I just hate to have worked the whole thing and have it be a useless item. It was kinda tough and squeeky (hehe) to work with. Well, thank goodness I didn't make some huge sweater out of it! Thanks for the heads up!

Opal said...

Oh no! How traumatic! I'm so sorry you had to go through that.

MsFortuknit said...

I love that hat!