Early last year I visited the Austalian Country Spinners shop in Wangaratta and bought armloads of wool. I confess I bought some novelty yarn. It was called Firefly, and contained a thread of dark red wool plied with a thin white one with little ‘wings’ at intervals.

Why did I buy it? Well, it wasn’t acrylic. It was red. And it was dirt cheap (about 50c a ball). And it was… cute.

Back home I knitted up a swatch. As I’d suspected, the cuteness of the wings became an overwhelming mess of ‘fur’. I hit on the idea of knitting it doubled with some Bendy in the same dark red. I liked the swatch. It reminded me of a jacket on the Fluffa blog called Popcorn. I like much of what skinny rabbit knits. Of course, she’s an experienced knitter and fashion-designer-in-training, and I was (and still are) an inexprienced hack.

I used a jacket pattern from Vogue Knitting. It knit up really quick.

Close up:

Now, as I knit this a few names came to mind. ‘Coconut Ice’ was suggested by several people. But I should have known things weren’t going quite to plan when the name that stuck in my head was ‘Dandruff’.

I only wore this jacket a few times. Nobody said “my god what is that thing you’re wearing”, and it is delicously warm. A few people complimented me on it. But… every time I wore it I felt like a penguin chick halfway through moulting, with a rash. I felt like I was wearing the pelt of some strange red-skinned orangutan with a flakey skin problem.

Of course I’d had twinges of doubt as I knit it. I’d told myself that, since the ‘wings’ come out easily, I could always pluck them out of the jacket if I didn’t like it. A few days ago I brought the jacket out and hung it up. Was it time for it to get plucked?

Yesterday I decided it was. It took a LOT longer than I imagined it would. I listened to three one hour podcasts. You could say it took a plucking long time.

Much better. You can see the double moss stitch cuffs and band now. The white thread gives it a subtle texture that I like. I left a smattering of wings in place.

And here’s the pile of ‘wings’ I removed.

Quite a pile. I hope the jacket wasn’t warm because of them. I doubt it. It’s still a good heavy double 8ply fabric. And with builders coming this week to start the extension, which will probably involve the turning of eletricity (and heating) while they demolish the roof of the garage, I may need a heavy warm jacket.

I hereby re-dub it the “Plucky Jacket”

(Oh, and I’m having some email trouble at the moment, so I might not get emails for a day or two. Should be fixed soon. Better be.)