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Leonard, my 2 year old basset, is a "houdini hound". He has managed to break out of his kennel cage numerous times and in the process bending the cage door wires. I've been leaving him alone while running errands and he has been very good so today I decided to let him roam the house while I was at work (what was I thinking!). I closed the bedroom doors to restrict his access and thought my knitting was safe as I took my project bag to work with me.
Apparently I didn't learn my previous lesson about bassets and knitting because after praising him for being such a good boy while I was at work, I went into the office and found a HUGE YARN SNARL. Words can't begin to describe opening the French door (this should have been my first clue as I had shut both doors before I left) and seeing mounds of creamy angora merino wool in snarly clumps strewn across the carpet. Yes, that's right angora merino wool! My favorite LYS had had a sale to end all sales and I had purchased 18 skeins of Sublime Angora Merino at a huge savings. This gorgeous yarn had been sitting in a heavy duty plastic bag with a knotted drawstring beside my desk chair for a couple of weeks and Leonard had completely ignored it. Not today. Today he decided to find out just how soft and luscious it was. Perhaps after watching me knitting night after night he decided to surprise me by teaching himself to knit so we could swap patterns. Who knows what crossed his mind but the end result was an art project reminiscent of Christo draping fabric all through Central Park, in other words a mess!
The good news is that Leonard didn't unwind and snarl all 18 skeins. Instead he selected 11 skeins to snarl and he left the remaining 7 skeins out of the bag but untouched. How much is is 11 skeins of yarn? It's 1,430 yards or approximately 4/5 of a mile. It took me 3 hours to separate and wind my precious yarn. I have misshapen balls of varying sizes but I only had to throw a teeny tiny amount away.
My penance for leaving him loose where he could get into my yarn will be weaving in the enormous amount of ends I will have when I complete my project using all these misshapen rewound balls. His penance? Staying in the kennel during the day with only fond memories of his one day of freedom.
