Enchanting Juno

8 things.

It is too bloody hot to knit.  I am averaging about 4 rounds a night - that would be sleeve rounds at 48 stitches per - while I argue with the cat about whether or not her desire to swallow a couple of feet of my working yarn any time she can is really healthy for her.  On several levels.  Also reading mystery novels.  Anne Perry.  Inspector Monk. 

I'm waiting for the tree guy to come give me an estimate on removing the - I hesitate to call it a branch, more of a tree section - that fell on my neighbor's fence two days ago.  We've had some thunder, whooo boy.

My blog is rated R. via Dr. Steph.

Mingle² - Online Dating

This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:

sex (4x) bitch (3x) ass (2x) torture (1x)

Update: After this post, my R rating is based on the following. 

sex (6x) bitch (4x) fuck (3x) dead (2x) hurt (1x)

I'm finding the justaposition of hurtful words emotionally and visually compelling.

I wonder how far back they go?  And I'm finding all kind of thoughts stirring - along the lines of what determines an adult rating, and why am I moved to say fuck some more?  Is this a contrarian streak?  A fear of being too benign?  Is the reflex to be contrary in reality the most conventional response?  I saw this t-shirt recently that said "I fuck like a girl" across the front.  I had a similar thought cycle about this - is it subversive?  Why?  What are my assumptions about how women have sex?  What are my culture's assumptions?  Is wearing it a contrary act?  Or a complicit one?

Someone told me yesterday that I was using an MRI to look at the world when a stethoscope would do.  I don't know what they were talking about, do you?

Fortuitously, since I have nothing to show, nor complete thoughts to share, my one non-knitting reader - actually there may be more, but this one I know about - has memed me.  You might enjoy checking him out - politics and opinion a specialty, Lance Mannion.

(Update:  In a moment of being extremely meta I didn't explain the meme. Assuming you all would know.  Which you seem to.  Which I am enjoying.  For the sake of accuracy:  List eight random facts about yourself.)

1) In college I was one of those girls who didn't want to be associated with those feminists.  It wasn't that I wasn't interested in the ideas or ideals of it, but I was extremely conflict averse and also didn't want to give up boys.  I don't think I understood the difference between 'strident' and 'opinionated' until much later.  (I did understand you could be straight and feminist, really.  In theory.  I think I just wasn't ready for the thorough way you have to question reality once you step into awareness.  It was simpler just to think that men wouldn't like me if I spoke up.  Which I did anyway without realizing it.  I was incredibly outspoken for a woman who thought she was quiet - for real.  I once told the principal of my high school that I was would not be able to give her the respect I gave my parents (which she had just demanded) until she began to treat me and my classmates as my parents did, as human beings.  Ah, the righteousness of youth. That was a good day.)

2) I was thirty-four before I kissed someone taller than I, thirty-five before I slept with someone ditto - I'm 6'3".  I much prefer it.

3) When I was a little girl - a tiny one, like 4 - I used to drag my little chair out to the milk porch (little covered bit by the kitchen door where the milkman left his goods.) during storms to watch the lighting.  I have incredible, vivid memories of this, and in fact, still do it.  Different porch and no milkman, but if the storm is right overhead, I'll be standing in a door way, or out under the eaves, watching the water drops strobe where they sheet off the roof, and feeling the ozone dance on my skin.

4) I think refrigerating tomatoes ought to be a hangin' offense.

5) I can eat the same thing over again for weeks.  Partly its just laziness - cooking for one is a bore.  But partly I get in a groove and just like it.  I'm on a spinach/kale, paprika, feta, chicken, onion thing right now.  It's really good. 

6) I hate to be thought of as predictable.  Even when it is true.  Especially when it is true.

7)  I have considered going back to school for an advanced degree just for the cap and gown.  Or, you know, just starting to wear a cape around.

8) I had a brief episode of religious mania when I was about 5 or 6 - I distinctly remember telling my father that "god is love, daddy" but it wore off fast.  Other than that instance, I seem to have been born with a non-conformist kink in my stride (a quiet one sometimes, see conflict averse, above).  Just ask my mother. 

Not going to pass it on - my mailbox is where chain letters go to die - but feel free to join in if you feel stirred to do so - leave a link in the comments for me to see though, okay?

The thing for which I really need Novacaine is my checkbook.

I have spent most of the week at the dentist.  It is really cutting into my knitting.  Also my talking, and you know how much I like to do that.

I have a great dentist, he's an artist in some part of himself (and a pragmatist, which is how he ended up a dentist I expect) and he cracks me up.   I went to him for the first time about 10 years ago when an old filling fell out, taking half the tooth with it.  He's mostly a specialist - maxilofacial prosthetics, which are really, really fascinating, though generally, I'd rather keep my own ear thank you, and specialized dental things and the odd client like me, who's just there for the usual.

He's been keeping an eye on my childhood fillings - most of them 25 years old at this point, about which I would rather not think, my dears - and about 6 months ago he said that 4 of them had to go - that they were eroded to the point of letting in trouble and I had decay beginning under them. 

I hate shots in the gum with a deep shivering ickiness, which caused me to block out this information for a while, but eventually I went in - what's worse than replacing fillings?  Root canal.  You have to weigh your phobias.

Last month I had the two on the right replaced.  I have some kind of weird anesthetic bio-resistance so we do this thing - he gives me a shot, we wait, he tries the drill.  He peels me off the ceiling, gives me another shot.  Ditto.  (I have a high tolerance for alcohol too)
By the third shot I can't feel my whole head, but I can still feel the drill a little bit, and I suck it up and he does his thing.   It was fine - certainly not enough to keep me from MDS&W the next morning - but he says that one of the teeth is at this point little more than a shell.  I need a crown.  How do I feel about gold? 

He was hilarious, kept talking about doing dentistry old school and how that's the standard for excellence and properly cared for it will last the rest of my life (SOLD!) but no one likes them any more - they want composite.  How much?  The same?  I allow as how I think I can live with some dental bling and he is a happy man.

Monday was the two on the left.  We try beginning me earlier with the Novocaine.  Same deal.  He keeps going  "How can you feel that!  If you can't feel your lip (which I can't) the nerve is asleep.  They're CONNECTED."  I dunno what to tell you, man.  The vibration, he hurt me.  The other dentist comes in and they look in my mouth and talk about abnormal nerve clusters while I drool into my bib.  I have particularly enjoyed the mumbling over the last few days, as somewhere around shot number three I think I got a little bruise on the inside of my tongue.  It has been difficult to e-nun-ci-ate clearly.

Dental work is a bitch.  I'm just glad he makes me laugh. 

This morning I went back for the beginning of the crown.  We finally have the balance of the anesthetic right - a little more than most, and it takes a little longer to kick in - just in time for him to be done with drilling my mouth for the next few years, but hey.   The shots were smoooth....and right at the end he says - I nicked a vessel a bit, you might feel a bit of an epinephrine reaction.

I start to say, "what?"

Except that I am sitting bolt upright in the chair.  My hands are shaking and my heart racing and my eyes are darting around the room.  I swear to you, I am looking for a predator so I can rip him apart with my hands.  I was one loud noise away from crouching in the corner with a projectile weapon, calculating my odds of survival. 

He says "We call that the flight or fight response.  Yours seems strong."

Suddenly I understand war better. 

I could not stop watching my hands tremble. The human body is amazing.

Once I was numb AND no longer vibrating (I could never take stimulants. Feel like that on purpose?  Forget it.), we went ahead with my temporary crown.  I loved watching him make it, something that will be in my mouth less than four weeks, he still shapes with an artist's eye, a perfectionist's care.   

Next month - gold tooth.  In the meantime, I am exhausted.

This is what I know.

Life is short.

I don't mean get your nose down, make progress, get going.  No one ever means that when they say life is short.  I mean, fuck, estrangement is stupid.  Not talking to people is really, really stupid.

I used to have this friend.  He was all brain, all intellect, he was brilliant, and fucked up in more ways than I can count.  He is who I was referring to in my list of 100 things when I said:

1. The only reason I will turn my back on a friendship is if it is more important to the other person that I be who they think I should be than that I be who I actually am.

He was the first and for a long time ONLY person I told when I began writing the blog.  He thought I was brilliant.  He loved me in some way I could never understand.  He was my father's best friend in some ways, best friend or surrogate son.  I am not sure which or either. Maybe both.  Sometimes I felt like I inherited him.  He was difficult.  He enraged me.  There was some thing he knew about my father he would never tell me.   Until I was 'ready'.  You see where the enraging came in. Because eventually he forgot what it was.  He was pathologically private.   I have not spoken to him in more than a year, and only sporadically for some time before that.

I emailed him out of the blue a month or so ago.

He didn't answer.  Which was odd.  Because he was exceptionally well mannered.

It turns out, he's dead.  I don't know how or why.  And there is no one to ask, as I don't know his family or how to reach them.  Now that I think of it there are a lot of missing strands in the threads that connected us.  The woman I used to work for who introduced me to him in the first place 10 years ago.  My father. 

He was 33. Thirty-three.

No condolences please, really.  He has not been a part of my life for a while.  Whatever I am feeling, it is not as simple as grief.  If you feel something - sympathy, compassion - pause a moment to think about his parents, his network of active friends. 

But if you have anyone you always thought you would talk to again someday, if only to figure out what happened?  Yeah, you should call them.

Something of a [breakfast] epiphany.

You know how sometimes you find something, something you never even dreamed existed and then you can't live without it ever again and this transition from one state of being - ignorance - to another - essential need - is instantaneous?

The other day I was at Whole Foods, which is a thing I try not to do too often as it is terribly expensive.

But they are the only place around here I can reliably find Dr Praeger's Spinach Pancakes, without which Saturday breakfast would be meaningless, so that's how much my fiscal integrity is worth right there.  They're really good.  With poached eggs and Indian relish on top, mmmmmm.
Plus I love Dr. P's motto - where you recognize all the ingredients.   I would love to be the kind of woman who cooked all her own food lovingly from carefully selected locally grown produce and made her own yogurt from the milk of virgin goats, but I have wool instead and there are only so many hours in the day.  I do try to make my shortcuts reasonably non-toxic.

Where was I?  Whole Foods. 

I went to the yogurt section becasue the only yogurt I had left at home was displeasing to me - unsuccessful flavor choice - and for reasons that are a little unclear I picked up a carton or two of something called skyr.is in strawberry.  I think it looked a bit like Greek yogurt to me, but with less fat and the container had a spoon attached which is wasteful except when you bring a yogurt to work without a spoon, rather compromising the success of breakfast.
And I have such a love hate relationship with yogurt to begin with I am always interested in new approaches.

Skyr is not yogurt, skyr is the food of the gods, or of Iceland, which may be the same thing.  It is thick like sour cream, and sharper flavored, and very high protein and non-fat but without that compromised flavor that often taints non-fat things and it turns out it is not even yogurt, it is cheese and my gods, I love it wholly.
The strawberry is a hair too sweet, but very good, the blueberry extremely so,  but a handful of granola muted the sweetness to palatability (I won't buy that one again).  I haven't been able to try the vanilla as it is always sold out - leading me to believe that it might be the most successful flavor - and the plain is incredibly tart but delicious.  Particularly the way I ate it this morning, with a cut up nectarine and some hemp granola and a little Vermont maple syrup and some wheat germ.  Yum.

This little container fills me up until lunch, it is delicious, it has 22 grams of protein and until I filled it up with granola and fruit, a mere 110 calories.  It is apparently the national food of Iceland - how much of these kinds of marketing claims do I choose to believe?  Plus I wonder if the Skyr we're getting here is the same as Icelandic Skyr really?  But I don't care.   I went back to Whole Foods over the weekend - the sole importer, according to Google - and bought 8 little containers.   I called people up to tell them about it.  I explained to random people at the market why they ought to try it.

I'm saving the little folding spoons though, I can't bear to throw them away.

(I will know I have truly succeeded in changing myself for the better when the morning beverage that accompanies this is a cup of tea instead of a diet Coke.)

My gauge is ass.

I started writing a follow up to my follow up about all the amazing comments and emails I got last week and found myself wandering into some deeper waters about my mom and why I feel so strongly about some of this stuff.  And that is clearly a post that will take more energy than I have time for now.  Something to look forward too, uh huh.

But I want to thank you all.  Some of you think I'm pretty clever and some of you think I'm an idiot (both of which are true sometimes) but all the stories you told gave me something I didn't expect, which is confirmation that talking does sometimes make a difference.   It turns out I have changed a life with all my thinking and talking and fretting - my own.  Maybe someone else's too, someday.  But my own every day. 

So some knitting -

I'm having wicked gauge trouble with this silk.  I was fine for the first few inches (which you can see above) but now every row seems to get looser.  Not seems.  Is.

You have to look closely - flash pictures are bad for this kind of detail - but there is much more air in the later garter stitch rows. And when I hold it up the whole thing stretches out big time.  Clearly, somewhere in here I ought to have switched to a 3mm needle.

I find it particularly odd, as frequently the stitches feel quite tight on the needle, but when I run into them on the next row, they are so loose that the townspeople will shortly begin to cast aspersions on their virtue. And then we'll have to talk about double standards. Nobody wants that.

It is only going to get worse when I block it as silk + water = vastness.

Ah well, the silk is so pretty, it will look nice anyway.  I think I might have to pare off a repeat or two to have enough to finish.

Because this is all I've got left.  And I am about to do eyelet row 16 of a proposed 19, and still have 10 rows of ruffle left.  I think maybe I ought to start that ruffle right away.  Where is that shawl percentage calculator?

This is why I rarely knit with plant fibers.  We don't get along.  I need wool's elasticity to keep me on the straight and narrow.

Update:  Arianne in the comments gently points out to me that I have been imprecise here.  She has my thanks. I do NOT in fact think that silk is a plant fiber - but for knitting me, silk has qualities in common with plant fibers.  I made a leap from silk to other fibers I tend to have gauge trouble with because they occupy the same bin in my head, the one marked "trouble." (See? Idiot)

Juno's Rule for Life #4: Plant fibers are for sewing.  Wool is for knitting.

(The other's are:

Rule #1: Lime Makes Everything Better
Rule #2: Nobody finishes before I do
Rule #3: The bigger the bust the finer the yarn

What? I never said they were all knitting rules)

v. 3.8

I had a refreshing experience the other night - I had dinner with a friend.  The same friend who started me off on all this by making the remark about the woman who wrote The Rules.

I warned him at the start that I was a little bit chapped about sexism that day and he should be prepared.  And he wanted to know what brought this on. 

"It started with something you said".

I could see he was surprised.  After a little silence he asked what that was and I told him.

Then he stared at the wall a bit.  And almost said something.  And stared at me a little bit.  He was a little bit dumbthwacked.

Then he said that I was right, he had used different standards to describe a woman and a man doing the same stupid thing.  He was really surprised by himself, I could tell.  (I sympathize - when I find myself holding a bit of misanthropy, or sexism or racism in myself, I am always really startled and sometimes inclined to refuse delivery on the knowledge as well.  Overcoming reflexive denial - hey, I'm not like that! - is the natural first stage in recognizing the injustices we see and perpetuate.)

Later he said I had given him a ton to think about and he couldn't tell me how much he had enjoyed the conversation.

The best thing about it?  He listened to my opinion with out adding a "but" at the end (I hate that 'but').  I may not change his mind about this, in the end he might go on using different standards for men and women.  But he heard what I had to say.  He accepted my opinion as a valid point.  He did not offer examples of how it really isn't that bad and he isn't like that.  He did not try to deflect my point.  Which is to say, he treated me like an equal with a legitimate viewpoint.

It was great.

The fact that I found it an exhilarating change from the norm is a bit depressing, but I'm going to be happy about it anyway.  One step to begin a journey, one stitch to begin a sweater.  You know.

Thank you all for telling your own tales, sharing your own opinions in the comments from the other day. I love it when you tell me stories and I loved hearing all the ways in which you have felt the same way - it may not be a cause for optimism, but it is nice not to be alone in my frustrations.

I'm getting less and less inclined to not speak these days - I used to be uneasy being direct with people, worrying that my perspective was not educated enough, that I didn't know enough to have a right to speak.  But there are plenty of people talking out there - with whose viewpoints I disagree deeply - who clearly don't worry about their own right to an opinion, so what am I accomplishing with my discrete silence?  Participation is what - the wrong kind of enabling, silent complicity.
So I am leaving behind my 'nice girl' more and more every day and I feel fine.  The world doesn't end and hardly anyone is injured.  A spoon full of sugar is a trick you use get children to swallow something unpalatable and I don't think that approach is much of a compliment to adults on either side of any discussion.

It really is everywhere.

I don't think I'm doing my wraps per inch right.  I make 9 wpi for the orange yarn as finished. 
And I unwrapped my swatch - the 4.25 stitches per inch one - and got a quick 11 WPI on that one. Though I really ought to give it a rinse to straighten out the bends before I take that as useful

According to the charts that makes the finished yarn bulky and the original swatch heavy worsted.   It doens't seem accurate.  Any thoughts an the correct amount of tension to apply during the wrapping process would be welcome.

In the meantime, I'm feeling broody about men and women and the impossibility of it all working out.

Yesterday I was catching up on some non-knitting blog reading and stumbled across a post about the end of the Sopranos by a blogger I have a lot of respect for.  I didn't watch the show, but I'm interested in his opinions about most things, so I read it - I've enjoyed seeing the differencing levels of outrage and interest in the end of this show all over, actually.  But he closed his post with a joke about Carmela vs Meadow.  It shocked me.

Partly because that's a kind of casual misogyny that I don't associate with this person, and partly because it came a few posts after a really pointed piece of writing about about older actresses and their sexuality in movies and the ways in which women are considered viable in the public eye only as long as they have sex appeal. 

I left a comment.  And then the brooding began because I think the last time I left a comment on this blog it was to protest language I read as perpetuating anti women stereotypes. So now I am that woman, who's always complaining about sexism.  And I am - the more aware I get the more I see the poisonous thread of hate and fear that informs the place of women in the world.

There's a commercial I've heard a piece of recently - I don't know what it is a commercial for, because as soon as it penetrates my consciousness I start to lose my temper and I never hear the end.  But it is for some new man-show, offering man-stuff including a venue to discuss the compelling question of which Jessica is hotter.  Because there is no other place to discuss that important issue. 

Can you imagine the outrage if anyone proposed a show for women that featured a discussion of the sexual merits of two lightly clad men?  It's gross isn't it?  Hint:  If it is gross for one, it is gross for ALL.

The other day I was talking to someone about dating and The Rules and the comparable program for men about How To Score and the hateful, hateful way it dehumanizes all the participants to treat the other sex as the opponent in a competitive sport, and the person I was talking to said yes, the guy doing the how to score program is an idiot and misses the point.  And Oh, yeah, I saw that Rules woman on a talk show and my god - What A Bitch.  And ugly.  I bet she hasn't had sex in years.

And there it is.  A man who writes something base and manipulative about women is an idiot.  A woman who writes something base and manipulative about men is vicious and sexually unappealing. 
Because that's the worst thing we can say about a woman.  That she has no sexual value.

I could go on and on and possibly will - I may very well have a longer post brewing about all the things that have made me despair and rage in the past month.  A very long list, sadly.    I'm tired of it, I'm tired of watching basic human rights be eroded away from women drop by drop, I'm tired of a culture that pats me on the head when I express my concerns, that says that its only language, it doesn't matter, that I encourage my girlfriend to be more X or Y or Z without understanding that if its about you, its still sexism even if it looks kinder, a world in which its OK to joke about whether a fictional mother or daughter is the more sexually intriguing without being at all disgusted by what that implies.

I am a hypocrite too - I worry about being attractive, I worry about my own desireablity, my social worth, my sexual value in the marketplace.  I don't think I can stop being a part of the problem as much as I also want to be part of a good solution.  I don't know what to do to change it, except talk.  I believe in cumulative action, I believe that every time I explain to the person in line behind me why I use cloth shopping bags that I AM making a difference, that my words make an impact....but when it comes to the firestorm of hate we have for women, I don't think its working.

Yarn - unlike people - blossoms with violence.

I thought I was thwacking my fiber on the counter because it was fun (Which it totally is. Lowers my blood pressure too), but it turns out there's a whole lot more to it than that.

The end result isn't quite dry, so the yardage is a mystery, but I adore this yarn.  The llama gives it drape and silkiness and the beat down gave it cohesion.  All the loops are quietly laid side by side in orderly beauty, not resisting their fate.  It's a wonder.  I want to reskein when its dry, but it might break my heart to untie and disrupt it.

Awaiting a soggy fate.

Hello gorgeous.

If you're curious about why you might want to domestically abuse your handspun, click these following images for big and drag them side by side (also imagine that they were taken in good light.  Sorry about the flash glare.)

and look at the article in this month's Spin Off - which I have not yet seen, but in which Judith Mackenzie McCuin says....how to wet finish your yarn.

I expect there's a lot of variation by fiber type and I expect I will learn it all the hard way, as is my habit.  But I'll take the whole idea a lot more seriously.   

Now, if I only have enough.....how can 39 ounces not be a sweater?

Planning backwards

That was very interesting. 

If anyone is, like me, a largely seat-of-her-pants, self-taught spinner, I highly recommend the comments to the last post. I understood in theory the idea that you begin by deciding what you want and work back to get it, but I hadn't followed the thought all the way to its end.  I think I had all the information in my head in a kind of vague way, but it wasn't live for me.  Now it is. 

I also was still - because I hadn't made any kind of one to one comparison - unclear on the textural differences between a three and two ply yarn that might look - to the unskilled eye - about the same weight.  Not anymore - the reason that all my three ply efforts up to this point have been dense like undercooked pasta is revealed to me now. (Answer: Too much twist in my singles)

I'm going with the two-ply in this case for several reason - even though it won't be the hardest wearing yarn in the history of spinning.   Basically, I planned wrong and the singles I've already spun are too large and have too much twist for a three ply that would make me happy to knit or wear.  Next time...and I do mean that, because I have a much better idea of how to accomplish that goal starting from 0 the next time out...I'll plan for a three ply and hopefully get a bit closer to the goal.  Maybe that 2.5 pound bag of Spinner's Hill.......

These three bobbins represent most of one 13 ounce bag of roving.  I plied two of them into one large skein this weekend and got about 225 yards - final wpi pending drying.    At that rate, I'll only be getting maybe 1200 yards of two ply from all three big bags.  If only for that reason a three ply is out of the question - it would be a phenomenally, unwearably heavy yarn at this weight.  And I wouldn't have enough to cover all my parts.   

Since this is now a learning project - well, they are all learning projects, aren't they?  But since I have already missed what I was aiming for, it is open season on this project:  I decided to follow Abby's recent tutorial on beating the stuffing out of your yarn.  The idea makes a lot of sense - torture it now, get any changes out of its system before you knit it up and find out the hard way what secrets lurk inside the ply.  Fluff it up.  Full it a bit.  Make it be itself now.  We are all the better for a little roughing up in life, yes?  Call it experience.

Soaked in hot, hot soapy water, swished, wrung, rinsed with cold, agitated in hot, kneaded, wrung again and taken outside to be smacked on the fence.   Bled a LOT - which the swatches did NOT.  I shall be interested in any color differences when dry.

I love my neighborhood - my neighbor two doors down was in her back yard, didn't even give a quizzical glance to the wet thwap of wool on wood.

Still wet. 

Other weekend activities:

You know when you trip on something - always something that has been exactly where it is for 6 years, of course - and your eyes tear and you curse and hop and eventually nerve yourself up to look at the wreckage of your toe and it is totally fine? 

Not this time.  I am very glad it is sandal season, is what I'm saying.

eeny, meeny, miney.....except more cold bloodedly analytical.

The time has come to make some decisions about what comes next. 

I showed you the singles, and now I have plied samples - a two ply and a three.  They are dramatically different.  I don't know which to choose.  You are my only hope.

This is a rambouillet/llama blend and I plan a cardigan of the sort of outdoor variety - definately not an indoor sweater, but not a ski sweater either.  A walk the dog around the block in october sweater, except, no dog.  An it-is-cold-in-here-because-I-do-not-turn-on-the-heat -no-those-bastards-at-PSE&G-won't-get-my-money-sit-at-my-desk-
being-chilly kind of thing.  I want it to be warm, but pliant. 

The whole world tells me that a three ply is a better yarn for a sweater, longer wearing, better structure overall. 
But I'm worried that its too stiff to be at all flattering.

  2 ply

3 ply

But the thing I am slowly learning is that the YARN looking good is not the point.  I want the SWEATER to look good.  Good and RIGHT.

2 ply swatch

On 5 mm needles, 17 stitches to 4 inches, this was FUN to knit with.  Elastic.  The swatch is flexible and attractive, though today - after washing the skein, knitting it and washing the swatch - I am seeing a bit of blurring to the surface.  It feels great in my hand and I think it would drape nicely.  The drape and the blurring?  May be related.

3 ply swatch

On 6 mm needles, 15 stitches to 4 inches.  Less fun to knit - the yarn is rounder and less fluid, more resistant to each stitch.  Each stitch is clearer and the surface is showing much less wear than the 2 ply.  But it is stiffer.  More structured.  I have an idea that I might be able to block it harder to create drape.  But I need more 3 ply to sample. 

These two mini skeins were both balanced when they dried - but I am wondering if plying the three ply a little loser and knitting it on 6.5 mm needles would make a difference.  Or if I'd lose the firmer wearability.   Hmmm.

OK, off to ply some more.  All thoughts welcome.