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No knitting yesterday, as my carpal tunnel was acting up. I wore my wrist brace last night, and it's definitely feeling better.
Red Top is getting so close I can taste it. I'm getting a bit bored with the miles of stockinette and I'm ready for a new challenge. I've been getting complements from everyone who has seen it in progress. The bright red color is very popular. All I've got left is the front yoke from neckline up the two shoulder sides, and one sleeve. Tomorrow we're driving down to visit my sister, so I'll have a couple of hours of car-knitting time and some hanging-out-knitting time too. I'll probably be able to finish it by next week sometime, then it's on to the Leaf Lace Shawl!
I cast on for the Shawl on Thursday, just to have something different to work on at knitting club for a little while. I missed a yarnover on row 9 and of course didn't discover it until I realized I was a stitch short at the end of row 11. I wasn't careful enough about tinking the S1-K2tog-PSO part and ended up dropping stitches. I'll have to start over. But heck, it's only way at the beginning, and I learned a lesson about proper unknitting. So no great loss.
In non-knitting news, Mike finished installing the new floor in the room we're calling the library. It's pre-finished Bolivian Rosewood (sounds expensive, but it was very reasonable at Lumber Liquidators), and it came out beautifully! The next step is strip the Beatrix Potter wallpaper border, clean the walls, and prime them. Today we're going to Home Depot to look at paint colors, and maybe area rugs. I've looked on several websites and catalogs, and I'm having a lot of trouble deciding on a pattern style for the rug. I don't really care that much for oriental style designs, but I don't want something super geometric and/or contemporary either.
In adoption news, Mike asked me yesterday about setting up an adoption blog. He was very pleased to hear that our Typepad account supports up to three seperate blogs. So we may get that project underway soon too. We had our second home visit with the social worker last week and it went just as smoothly as the first one. She says assuming she receives all our reference letters, etc., she should have the report done by mid-July. Wow -- this is really happening!
And speaking of baby boys, did I mention I saw a Devan-Along at Nancy's blog, Bronx Girl Knits? I'm planning to make Devan as my first baby project for our new little one. However, I won't know how big he is until we get the actual referral and that won't be for at least a few months. I guess I'll have to host a "Devan Behind" next fall or winter. :-)
In the meantime, I leave you with "Heidi-In-The-Field":
Have a great weekend!
Or at least, I will be soon. After the Leaf Lace Shawl, and the Cape Cod Pullover, and a pair of socks or two. THEN I will be a Charlotte Woman. In the meantime, more stash acquisition.
Remember I said that I wasn't allowed to buy any more yarn unless it was for Charlotte?
On Saturday, Mike and I took a little drive north to Center Harbor, NH. It's only about an hour and a half away. Of course I forgot it was Laconia Motorcyle Week (aka Bike Week), so there were a gazillion Harleys driving around. But that was OK. Mike's a motorcylclist too, so I can deal. One of these days Il'l post a photo of him on his bike.
Center Harbor is home to Patternworks, with their Wall Of Koigu. Sorry I forgot to take a picture of me drooling. I can't even IMAGINE selecting Charlotte colors from catalog or online pictures. Props to you gals who've done it. It took me almost an hour to come up with these two beauties, and that was in person! Come to think of it, maybe that's why it took so long. Charlotte, come to mama!
Charlotte #1, from left to right: 2416, P703, 2290, P407, 2236
Charlotte #2, from left to right: 3000, P426, P217, P524, 1019
I arrived intending to put together something mostly bluish. Imagine my surprise when I ended up with two Charlottes that were mostly purplish. Guess I was having a purple brain day.
Now that I realize Typepad doesn't like superlong posts with too many pictures, I'm trying to keep them a little shorter. This is part 3 of my catching up with posting my most recent acquisitions. If you haven't already, read Saturday June 12ths and Sunday June 13ths entries first. Now, on to the yarn!
Before I declared the post-yarn crawl moratorium, I had won three ebay auctions.
1) 3000 yards of emerald green worsted weight from the KnitStore ebay seller for less than $50, which I think I'm going to use to make the Gansey sweater in Style At Large
2) 10 skeins (2200 yards) of Cotton Fleece in Caribbean Sea for $33 (that's half-price!). The label is stamped "seconds," and you can see a few spots here and there where the dye is slightly lighter. However, it's barely noticeable, and I think it was just add character and texture to the knitted fabric, rather than be a detriment. Plus -- Cotton Fleece half price! So there's no bad here.
3) Dawn French's Big Knits and Great Big Knits -- both from England, both in great condition, both at reasonable prices (even including the shipping).
What a revelation to find patterns that are actually TOO BIG! Good thing they include excellent instructions for altering the sizes. There are at least a couple of things in each book that caught my eye. Much of it is way too "LOOK AT ME; I'M A HUGE TENTLIKE SWEATER" for me, though.
If you haven't read yesterday's post, go read that first. This is a continuation. I had written a bunch more with several more pictures, but Typepad ate it. I couldn't bear to rewrite it last night. So here we go today.
I believe that knitters, and many other types of crafters as well, often fall into one of the following two categories.
1) find a pattern/project, then buy the yarn/materials for said project
2) find yarn/materials they love, then look for a project to make with those materials
Of course, some people are a combination of the two. Which are you?
I am definitely a #1 in this case. Perhaps it's because I am plus-sized, and therefore believe little camis and tanks are not in my immediate future. I can't bring myself to just buy 5 or 6 balls/skeins of a yarn just because I like it. No not me. A short sleeve stockinette sweater in worsted weight takes between 1300-1600 yards of yarn, close to 2300 for long sleeved. Add cables, etc., and of course you're looking at more. So I tend to go from pattern to yarn rather than the other way around.
Did you sense a big old "BUT" coming? Of course you did!
While shopping at A Good Yarn in Brookline Village, I completely fell in love with Le Fibre Nobili TajMahal. And what's not to love? Each ball has 185 yards of 70% merino superfine, 22% silk, and 8% cashmere for $11! And the colors are amazing. It's a variegated hot pink, purple, teal, and black. Bring on the jewel tones!!
They only had 8 balls unfortunately. Let's do the math, shall we? 8 times 185 yards is 1480. BUT it's fingering weight. No way is that enough for a sweater. And frankly I'm just not into scarves that much. No problem, I'll just come home and ebay it and find some more somewhere, right? Wrong. Google had only a handful of references and none of them were for this yarn, and ebay had zilch. That's OK though, because I have about the next 8 projects already lined up. What's wrong with a little stash enhancement while I look for more? Heck, I love just staring at the stuff anyway.
This would probably be a good time to mention that after the ridiculous amount of yarn I bought at A Good Yarn, that I promised myself (and Mike) that I would put a moratorium on the yarn purchases until the Knitting Guild Northeast Conference here in Manchester in late July. The only exception to this is the Koigu and pattern for a Charlotte or two.
Anyway, about two weeks later, I was at my LYS, Ewe'll Love It, for knitting club. I was sitting on the other side of the table from my regular seat, so I had a view of a different wall of yarn than usual. I looked up and saw something that caught my eye. "No lookie-sees," I told myself sternly. "You are NOT allowed to buy any yarn for a while." Yeah, right! Lookie-see I do, of course. And what do I see hidden next to/behind said eye-catcher. That's right: 9 more balls of my beloved TajMahal!! It's not the same dye lot, of course, and it is noticeable. But I think if I alternate a few rows from each lot, it will be OK. So despite, the moratorium, I picked up all they had. The lesson here? Rotate my knitting club seat from time to time!
Props, kudos, attagirls, and You Go's go out to Bron and Carrie. Both have had some negative blogging experiences in the last few days, and both deserve the KnitBlog community's support and virtual hugs. Here's to you, gals!
I have been severely remiss in posting photos of the stash enhancements I have acquired recently. Warning, warning, warning, actual pictorial content follows!
First up, Leaf Lace Shawl yarn redux. The official start date for the KAL is June 15th. Of course it's not too late to join us -- click the link at left!! As I mentioned, I've been playing around a bit in anticipation of starting work on this beautiful pattern. I'm getting a really really loose stitch at the end of each row. I'm seriously considering slipping either the first or last stitch of each row. Am I risking a waaaaay too tight long top edge if I do this? Here's another beauty shot of the yarn, 50% Silk 50% Merino fingering weight from Ellen's 1/2 Pint Farm.
Next, a retrospective of the yarn I purchased on a "yarn crawl" with my friends Judy and Lucille. I met these terrific ladies at the weekly knitting get-togethers on Thursdays at Ewe'll Love It in Nashua, NH (aka my LYS). A couple of weeks ago, we took a day trip into Boston and went to Circles in Jamaica Plain and A Good Yarn in Brookline Village. Oh and did I forget to mention the absolutely scrumptious lunch at Al Dente in Boston's North End? Highly recommended! While on the way back to the "T", I even got to walk through the Shoah Holocaust memorial on Haymarket Street. Very moving.
Anyway, back to yarn acquisition.
Circles had a fascinating collection of unusual yarns I hadn't seen anywhere else. Nothing leaped out and said "buy me", so the only thing I actually bought there was a sock technique book whose name escapes me (and I'm not sure where I put it!)...
A Good Yarn was a different story. Wowee wow wow wow. What a selection! And the employees were especially nice. Shout out to Johanna at JoFrog is KnitFrog. :-) I bought several things there.
Some sock yarn with various recipients in mind (some of them are me -- heh heh):
Some Misti Alpaca in creamy white for a lacy shawl. About 2000 yards of laceweight 100% baby alpaca. I'm not even thinking about putting this one on the needles until after the Leaf Lace Shawl and a Charlotte or two.
12 skeins of Cascade 220 in color 8893 for the Oat Couture Celtic Cardigan:
ARGGGG. Typepad just ate the entire second half of my post. Alas, I guess there's a max limit. At least all my photos are cropped and ready to go. You'll just have to wait until tomorrow for part two.
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