This is the story of the most expensive skein of yarn I ever bought. This is the story of 2400 yards of Cherry Tree Hill Merino Lace that I lusted over and hemm-hawwed about justifying the expense and finally snatched for half off when the LYS was going out of business. This is the story of dropped stitches, of frogging, of woe and scissors and triumph.
That said, it's going to be a long fucking story so get comfy.

The skein sat in my stash. It called to me, "Jillie, make me something pretty. I am soft and fuzzy and wonderful and you will love me. I am like that cheesy-ass *Giving Tree* book, only better."

And I finally said "OK, Yarn! I will!" Being a brokeass from spending $30 on a skein of yarn, I dug out my free pattern stash and stumbled upon Jeanie. "Oh hey, with my laceweight, this will make a nice scarf instead of a full-sized shawl. Which will be good for my first time knitting lace."

And I started knitting, and it was good. So I kept knitting, and knitting, and knitting. After a millionzillion hours, it was maybe 18" long. I decided to block it and see what it would look like.
So I took it off the needles and threaded it onto some scrap yarn. I looked up "How To Block Lace" on Google and decided to do it just perfectly right, being my First Special Project and all. So I did. I got some wires, some pins, and a towel, and I blocked that shit.

When it was dry, I gazed upon my masterpiece. "What the ever fucking fuck?" I thought. "Surely I did not put that giant fucking hole about an inch above the cast-on edge." And lo, there were 8 or 10 rows that looked like they'd been cut, making the aforementioned giant fucking hole. I cried, and shoved that shit in the closet for 6 months.



Enter today. I'm trying to clean out my giant stack of unfinished crap, and this was next on the list. "Hey," I said to myself, "I can string a lifeline right above the hole, cut off the knitting from the hole down, and only lose about 2 inches." So I dutifully started to insert my lifeline.
One problem. Did I mention the yarn is fuzzy? Well, it's fucking fuzzy, and all of the teeny-tiny skinny strands have gotten cozy and snug together, and it's impossible to get the needle in between this mess, or even to tell which stitches are where. This is not helped by the fact that the pattern is fucking ribbing and cables and dropped stitches. I gave that up pretty quickly.
"OK," I thought. "I'll just frog it and start over. It's a little wider than I would like anyway, so no harm done."

Ha. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Did I mention the yarn is fuzzy. Yeah. In about half an hour, I'd managed to frog maybe an inch. At this point I realized the stupidity of spending days frogging to get kinky, pilly yarn when I had more than 2000 yards of the stuff in pristine condition in the other room.

But what to do with the stuff I already knit?
I took my trusty scissors and I CUT THAT BITCH UP.



I cut it all up into 3/4" wide strips. I grabbed both ends and yanked on them and stretched them out. I made crazy-ass yarny stuff with knitted chunks in it:





"OMG!" you say. "Jillie, you destroyed teh speshul handpainted espensive yurns!"
And I say, "Yes, bitches, I did. And I fucking liked it."