Yes, I am a geek.

Jorun asked in the comments: Just a thought: Are you knitting "twisted stitces"?

- No. Definitely not. The pink cable sweater (my very first sweater in fact) was done completely in twisted stockinette stitch. Not on purpose, mind you, but I twisted every last stitch in the thing, and didn't realize it until a dormmate asked me what stitch I used. I said "stockinette" and she said no, that wasn't stockinette. Didn't know what it was, but it wasn't stockinette. Later, I found the "twisted stockinette stitch" in a stitch dictionary. Aha! Justification! It wasn't a mistake, it was a design element. Ahem.

Another thought: Could the 55/44 discrepancy be blamed on very dry air/yarn? I am used to my skeins being slightly heavier due to air humidity.

Good thought. It can be very humid in Italy, where the yarn was made. It can also be pretty humid in Ohio, where I bought the yarn, but we use a lot of air conditioning here, and thus maybe I dried the yarn out? So I did a little experiment. First, I had a moment of panic, and weighed a number of new skeins of yarn that I have bought at this store and another in town. Are all my skeins lighter than advertised? For the most part, no. My weather station says that my house was at 35% humidity last night. Skeins that were supposed to be 50g weighed in at 49, 51, 51, and 52 g. A 100g skein of lace came in at 99 g. So, at most a 4% discrepancy, and generally they err in my favor.

Next, I took some leftover fingering weight merino (44g), shown below, and brought it into work (I work in a lab). Initial weight: 43.912 g. Placed it in an oven (60 C) with a beaker of water for an hour (saturated atmosphere): the skein actually lost a bit of weight (42.93 g). Placed it under vacuum (~100 mTorr) for 1 hour to remove as much water as possible, skein weighs 41.98 g. Let it rest on the countertop for an hour to reabsorb moisture from atmosphere: 42.4 g. So, at most I was able to suck 5% of the weight out of the skein, and that's going from a very humid environment to a near vacuum (0% humidity). The skein then regained a third of that lost weight just sitting in the room. Conclusion: difference in humidity does not account for a 12% discrepancy in ball band weight vs. actual weight. Company is shorting the customers.




On to more cheerful topics:

Bamboo on bamboo
I did not work on the Lucky Tank last weekend. I left my pattern at work, and didn't feel like driving back in to get it. So, I did some swatching, and started working on Bamboozelle, a pattern from Knitty for a little basketweave stitch basket. Cool stitch. Tricky and requires a lot of attention, but looks really nice. I am using SWTC Bamboo yarn in Parrot, and am currently on US8 needles (bamboo of course).

I also did some sample lace swatches for an upcoming scarf project. Nothing good there yet. I plan to get back into the Lucky Tank tonight, and at least get the lace part done before I go on vacation.