Notes on Beaverslide

I first encountered Beaverslide yarn when Leanne used to sell it on eBay. She packaged it in auctions of four or five skeins, sometimes of different colors as a sampler. I bought some 90% wool/10% mohair in Bluebird to make a sweater for my younger sister for Christmas. It would match her eyes. It was among my first sweaters, and it was an ambitious Christmas--I had three sweaters on the needles for my sisters and my mom, and then...well, I got pregnant. I didn't finish a single thing on time. I was so nauseated and tired, it took all my energy to get to and from work. It turned out I didn't have enough Beaverslide yarn to finish my sister's sweater, and that's when I first encountered Leanne's excellent customer service. Of course she had more of the same dyelot--she holds a few back for this very reason. They all got their sweaters in the next few months...

Next, I bought some more 90/10 in Glacier Heather directly from Leanne to make my first Wonderful Wallaby for our infant son. I was pleased--it matched his eyes.

However, sensitive that others might not want baby things in wool, I didn't use it again for awhile. I didn't have much time to knit, either. By the time I got back to it, Beaverslide had been reviewed in Knitter's Review and had become very popular--or, at least popular enough that the auctions disappeared from eBay.

Not too long ago, I bought my first McTaggert Tweed. I was intrigued with the colors and when I received it, the texture was amazing. Almost like a boucle, very soft and, for lack of a more technical term, squishy. (The Elderberry...it doesn't match my eyes. Thank God.)

I've been knitting with it now for the past two or three weeks, working on a top-down jacket, and have only found it more interesting. My swatch with size 9 needles gave me 3.5 stitches to the inch before washing, and it was a struggle to get 4 sts to the inch with size 8 needles. That was not fun knitting. This yarn wants to be knit at a chunky weight, in my opinion. Besides that, when I did get 4 sts to the inch, after a solid wet block, the yarn relaxed back to 3.5 stitches to the inch. The row gauge changed ever-so-slightly as well--it actually shrunk a little bit.

Another endearing thing about Beaverslide McTaggert Tweed.... I had to completely change how I knit. Well, that might be overstating things. But previously, to get even tension, I would always wind the yarn around my pinky finger.

I got so much drag knitting this way with the McTaggert Tweed. I don't know if it's that I have dry hands, but the yarn was catching on my skin and it was very difficult to knit this way. Not fast. Not at all. So, as I wanted to finish this sweater in 2007, I decided to play around with things a little...

So here's how I do it now. Remarkably faster with this yarn and the tension might be a little off, but I keep telling myself what Meg Swansen said about blocking wool; that it's just magic.

The other thing to keep in mind about this yarn, in my experience, is that it breaks much more easily than other 100% wool yarns I've encountered. I haven't used it for cabling, but it doesn't take much tension to snap it.

Well, I love most yarn. But there's something special about Beaverslide McTaggert Tweed, and no one paid me to say that nor gave me any yarn to say that either. (but I'd be open to free yarn! Oh Leanne? Just kidding!)