Green and Gray Rainy Day

The sky in the photo came out much brighter than it looks to my eyes. It is very windy today, and the soft new leaves are getting tossed every which way. We certainly needed this rain. The US Geological Survey shows that most of western Michigan has had below-normal rainfall. I hope we get enough to make a difference. The local farmers have been planting fields with their tractors hidden in a cloud of brown dust.

Since the day was green and gray, I thought green and gray Pi knitting would be appropriate. I'm knitting this gray Pi out of a damaged cone of gray Shetland wool that came in a big box of yarn I won on eBay. Those nasty beetle larvae had gotten at the top. My intention is to knit up all the short strands, and then felt the piece.

First I mean to knit a Pi circle until it is bigger than I think I'll need. Then I will stop increasing, to make a soup-can shaped piece of knitting. When the can sides get tall enough, or when I run out of wool, I'll toss this in my front-loading washing machine with a batch of hot-wash, cold-rinse laundry.

I keep hearing that "You can't felt in a front-loader." I think it's more that it is harder to stop a front-loader to see how far the piece has shrunk. With a top loader, you can reach in there and see how it's doing: is it small enough yet? With my front loader, I can stop it, but then I have to wait for the door lock to unlatch. So it is harder to control the process. Wool pieces thrown into my front-loader certainly do shrink.