The Karma of Yarn

You remember that funny thing I said last post?  When I said I'd never knit socks that don't fit?

Well, even though I carefully stuck in a footnote saying I actually HAVE knit socks that don't fit, Fate didn't read that far.

Today at lunch, I ripped out my progress on the newest attempt at using the NOLA yarn.*  I'd been trotting along on the new pattern last night, and it seemed like it was a little big.  This morning I compared it to another knitted sock...

...and it was a bit big.

I thought about switching needles and carrying on, but the trick about socks is that you have to knit TWO OF THEM and I didn't want to mess with making the same mistake on the second sock so they'd match.

All of this has me thinking about when I bought the souvenir yarn last year.

I went to two different yarn shops in New Orleans, and one was lovely.  I made these socks out of the yarn I bought there.

I love the socks.  I love the yarn.  I love the pattern.  I loved the shop from which the yarn came.

Delightful.

I want to reiterate that Shop A was lovely.  Shop A is pictured above.  Shop B was a different story.

When I went to the second shop and bought the Schaefer yarn, the woman at the shop was not pleasant.  She was, in fact, unpleasant.  She was condescending and rude to the woman ahead of me in line, and then she actually admonished me with the "you're being naughty" finger gesture** when I didn't answer a question to her liking.  The question, might I add, was in reference to whether I preferred Technique A or Technique B when I knit socks.  Apparently Technique A was not the response she wanted.

Lady, it's knitting.  Don't tell me that I do knitting wrong because you do it differently.  We both have a nice time and end up with handmade socks.  There is no wrong in this scenario.

So, anyway, I hadn't bothered to write any of this down because I wanted to forget the unpleasant encounter at Shop #2.

But now, with the trouble this yarn is giving me....  I wonder if perhaps it has some bad karma stored up from being in that shop for so long.  I figure knitting with it shows it that it is loved, but perhaps it needed the reassurance of my love that only being willing to rip out twice and start a third time would provide.

So, yarn?  Love you.  Stop jerking me around.

*It's not those colors, but it's that yarn.  My colorway is purple, green, yellow, etc.  Think Mardi Gras in yarn form.  No, that's not right.  Mardi Gras in yarn form has beads and perhaps feathers.  Never mind.


**Not the flipping off gesture, the one where you slide one index finger down the other repeatedly in an admonishing manner.  There should really be a word for that.