Welcome back to Knitting Fantasy.  Last week I ended with a picture of the Fisherman's knit sweater I planned to frog.  The good news is I did finish frogging.  The sad news is I ended up with about 800 yards of curly mess:

 From this picture, you can see what the yarn is supposed to look like in the front skeins.  I even went ahead and started my February Lady's Sweater so I can participate in the 2 Knit Lit Chicks Podcast sweater KAL.  When I tried to knit with the curly yarn in the back, my stitches were uneven and the effect was just awful!  So, what to do?

Years ago, I read of this dilemma, somewhere.  I remember that the person steamed the yarn and stretched it by hanging it with weights.  The more I contemplated this problem, the more I thought about how some of my handspun yarn looks, when it is a little overspun.  A nice soak in a bath of hot soapy water, a little thwacking and that yarn straightens out and looks nice.  Why wouldn't the same treatment work on this frogged curly mess of yarn?

I pulled out my niddy noddy and went to work.  It is almost dry now and after all that good yarny spa treatment, here is what I have:

This yarn is ready to be wound from the skein into balls for knitting.  So, when you re-purpose your yarn, don't be afraid to prep it as though it were handspun.  Honestly, this yarn is like brand new!

Right around Christmas time, I got the bright idea that I would like to make The Great American Afghan using all of the squares in the book of the same name.  I am using similar earth tones to those in the book in Cascade 220 superwash.  So far, I have finished blocks these blocks:

I started with block 2 by Paula Levy because I was limited in the 
colors I had available.

I then moved on to block 3 by Traci Bunkers.  This has cables on the sides and bobbles down the middle.   So far, so good. 

After knitting all of the pieces for block 4 (see below for details) I moved along to block 5 by Jacqueline Jewett.  This one was quite a challenge, but not impossible.  Eventually, I was able to complete all of the bobbles!

This is block 4 by Celeste Pinheiro.  At least this is the base block.  The left side are cables intended to look like waves of water and the right side of the block is supposed to represent sand.  I have also knit a crab and a shell to go on the sand and 3 fish to swim in  the water.  I chose a contrasting color (butterscotch) for these items so they will pop on my square. 

And finally, I am working on block 6 by Maureen Egan Emlet.  I need to add the french knots and bullion knots to finish off the flowers.  In the book, they use pale green for these.  I plan to use cream colored yarn for these finishing touches.





In the midst of knitting all of this, I watched a podcast, which shall remain unnamed, in which the podcaster talked about this same afghan.  She and her friends decided to knit these squares and make a baby blanket for a friend.  They decided that it was just too difficult and bailed on many of the squares.  At first, I found this disheartening news.  Then, as I thought about my struggles to learn so many new stitches and techniques just to finish what I have done so far, I decided that surely the podcaster and her friend could complete this project if they did not have a strict time limit.  These blocks are taking me a whole lot longer to complete than any I have ever done before.  They are stretching, challenging and teaching me many new things.  And from this, I have learned that time limits can become an impediment to my knitting process.

This week I was delighted to discover a new podcast (to me).  It is Knit Nerd podcast.  And to my absolute delight, there is a thread for completing afghan squares!  I am so in on this one!  Hopefully this will keep me going all year long so that I can complete my afghan with the group.  At the same time, she only requests a square a month with the ability to post each quarter.  I have come this far with my 5 squares since Christmas so I think I can keep the pace.  If not, I need to remember my lesson above that the knitting process is more important that self-imposed time limits.

That is about all I have for now; so, remember to keep your knitting fantasy alive!