Second Verse, Same As the First

As I was knitting over the weekend, the old Herman's Hermits song sprang to mind, "I'm Henery the Eighth, I am; Henery the Eighth I am, I am," because I kept thinking, "Second verse, same as the first!"

I'm on the second of the main body pieces to this star sweater, the twin to the piece I've already finished. I'm on the downhill slide (not for the whole sweater - just for this bit), seeing as I am now decreasing the stitch count on every RS row instead of increasing. Here are some pictures of the "first verse" and my progress on "second verse":

Once I get this "second verse" done, I'll start on the side pieces, abbreviated versions of the front and back pieces. I'll have to ask my brother (musician & librarian) for appropriate terms to use for those: should they be "third & fourth refrains" or maybe "DC al Coda"??? I haven't looked at sheet music for many years, so my musical terminology is very rusty...but I digress.

Overall I am enjoying this project, especially since I waited so long to start and VK had already posted the pattern errata. I really feel sorry for anyone who bought the original 4 to 5 balls of yarn the pattern called for, expecting that it would complete the entire project! I understand that pattern errors happen, but how in the world do you mess up the amount of yarn by half? However, one thing I'm not loving are the bits of detrius that are in the yarn. This Summer Tweed yarn is 70% silk/30% cotton, and it has a unique feel in the hand. It's hard to explain, but it has a tendency to stick to itself a little bit when you are pulling the yarn through a loop while making a stitch. It's not annoying, just different. What's annoying are the pieces that look like cotton plant that are woven into the yarn. Here's a picture of what I just picked off the surface of a new ball in about one minute:














Maybe I'm too (nit) picky, but I am really surprised that the company's manufacturing process couldn't do a better job of eliminating this plant waste from the raw cotton before spinning. I've never seen anything like this before, even in yarn that was hand spun, so I have a hard time believing that a major yarn manufacturer can't get it together. I've bought other yarns from Rowan and they were wonderful, but I'll probably do a better job of looking over the yarn for imperfections before I buy from them again. Because that's a "second verse" I could do without.