The Mysterious Case of the Vanishing Kureyon.

I bought this at SkipNorth 2007. It cost me not a lot(under £15 if I recall correctly) considering there was 650g of Noro Kureyon there.



Or was there? I fished the nice neat pack of wound cakes out of stash on Friday night and started to think about making
Rosedale from Knitty. And like a good fishwife, I swatched.

???????

Nowhere near what I expected. I usually have to go down a needle size but this was ridiculous. Tried again. And again. But to get the pattern tension/gauge, I was ending up knitting cardboard. Eh? After much thought, a suspicion occurred. Who actually said it was Kureyon? Noro cone, sure, but no other info. Lets go look on the yarn search on Ravelry....Ah. Noro Iro. No wonder I was going wrong.

So now I had a different quest...to find a pattern I liked that I could make from 650g/850 yards of Iro. Clearly, a sweater was not a possibility. So I am making the Cold Weather Corset, also from Knitty, but with a zip up the front rather than the slightly ahem lacing. And ribbing rather than eyelet. And perhaps a higher neckline....really, it depends on how much yarn I have left. But definately not the lace-up bit!

I've started, and I have to say yet again how much I love knitting with Noro wool yarns. (Iro is 75% wool 25% silk.) There's nothing quite like knitting with good wool yarns in general, actually. (Sez she with the worlds largest stash of Summer Tweed in the attic.) Wool is stretchy and cushy and flows on the needles, and the finished fabric is warm and cuddly. Iro, like many Noro yarns, is a tad scratchy in the ball but the swatch I have washed is cuddle soft. So all in all, I'm not regretting the Kureyon.

(I am however now wondering about the other two cones I bought. One was for definate Silk Garden, but the other? I thought it was Kochoran. It's definately got angora, is aran weight and is plied, anyway. Oh well, will find out eventually!)