Bigger than they were last night, anyway.

A friend sent me a lovely skein/hank/quantity of hand-spun hand-painted yarn, and last night I had a tantrum at the project I was working on (pattern said "sweater"... I did not deviate from the pattern by one stitch, including using the "correct" yarn and needles, and I had a monstrosity that was hanging down to my knees freshly knitted... and after you start to wear something, it tends to stretch even more. So, I pouted and swore for a while, and decided, enough. I had already taken apart 2/3 of a sweater with the same yarn because I screwed up the pattern, so clearly this batch of yarn hates me. Rather than tearing it all apart, I've just banished the whole project to a plastic bag... I wanted to throw it out but I just couldn't. Mustn't anger the yarn gods.

So, what to do next? I decided to pull out this delightful hand-painted yarn sent to me by the lovely Lisa in New Jersey, to play with a new scarf pattern pointed out by the equally lovely Nisa in New Hampshire. We're a well-traveled bunch, if the Northeast counts as traveling.

Anyway, I clipped where the yarn was tied, and started to pull one end, to wind it all into a ball. Instead, in a moment of skein wrath, the yarn gods struck back, and tied that whole ball into a huge, painful, impossible knot. Oh, it was horrible.

But I worked, and slaved, and sweated, and after about three cumulative hours, I tamed it all back into a ball. For a while, actually, it was two balls, because I found both ends of the yarn and was working back and forth depending on which side had more slack.

And now I barely have the heart to start a project, but I'll risk it. It is really nice yarn.