Knitting mawata, part 1: anticipation
June 8th, 2011 07:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silvernfireOne of the (many) wonderful things about finally being out of school is that I can fill up my time with other kinds of classes if I want to. Well, tomorrow I'll be taking a class on knitting mawata (unspun silk "hankies" made by dissolving cocoons and spreading the silk thread out—oh, just go Google it).
In all honesty, it's not like I've been yearning for months to learn how to knit the stuff. Sure, I caught the Yarn Harlot's posts on the topic (first her mittens and then her brief mawata explanation). It was certainly different, but I didn't want silk mittens, even if they were the warmest things ever. I figured even if I learned how to knit from mawata, I didn't want to make mittens, and even if I did, I'd probably snag them on something and ruin all my hard work. So it was an interesting curiosity, but nothing more than that.
And then last month, my LYS announced some classes in knitting mawata. Glancing through the description, I saw that the proposed projects were either a hat or a cowl, projects far more to my liking than mittens. So I signed up, bought my mawata and pattern—I'm going to knit a cowl—and am psyching myself up for tomorrow evening. Note to self: bring the hand lotion. Just in spreading the mawata out to take the picture, it snagged on the supposedly smooth skin of my hands. But it's really soft, and I had to pack it back up again to keep from just running my fingers through it, playing in its puffiness.
In all honesty, it's not like I've been yearning for months to learn how to knit the stuff. Sure, I caught the Yarn Harlot's posts on the topic (first her mittens and then her brief mawata explanation). It was certainly different, but I didn't want silk mittens, even if they were the warmest things ever. I figured even if I learned how to knit from mawata, I didn't want to make mittens, and even if I did, I'd probably snag them on something and ruin all my hard work. So it was an interesting curiosity, but nothing more than that.
And then last month, my LYS announced some classes in knitting mawata. Glancing through the description, I saw that the proposed projects were either a hat or a cowl, projects far more to my liking than mittens. So I signed up, bought my mawata and pattern—I'm going to knit a cowl—and am psyching myself up for tomorrow evening. Note to self: bring the hand lotion. Just in spreading the mawata out to take the picture, it snagged on the supposedly smooth skin of my hands. But it's really soft, and I had to pack it back up again to keep from just running my fingers through it, playing in its puffiness.
