Knitting Here, Yarn There

Today I stopped by Unwind, my favorite LYS, to pick up the Fiber Trends Felted Clog pattern. JM and I have a plan to use some of my large stock of White Buffalo yarn to make clogs; I got the giant 'pucks' for $2 each last fall, and this yarn is perfect for felting. The staff were in the midst of unpacking a big shipment of GGH yarn, plus some other goodies. The main temptation was the dozen or so boxes of GGH Soft Kid sitting on the big table, all different colors. I fingered and I petted, but I passed. Whenever big shipments come in, it's always OK to do some digging into the new goodies, and I found Misti Alpaca's Baby Suri Silk. Oh, my, is this yummy! 80% baby suri alpaca and 20% silk. Some of the deepish red followed me home, plus the newest issue of Rebecca. There are a couple of patterns I liked, but mostly I wanted some of the stitch patterns, especially some of the cable designs. It seems like I'm newly interested in cables, though I don't think there are a lot of cabled sweaters in my future. Scarves, though, those will happen.

I've been working away on my Highland Triangle Shawl. I stopped at 4 repeats of the main stitch pattern, since unblocked it already reached 25 inches top to tip. The large border lace pattern seems to be another 8 inches or so, and I don't want this shawl to drag on the ground!! I may need to leave off a repeat of the border pattern, too, just to get this downsized for me. The pattern needs to be blocked only a little, just to open up the yarnovers, since this is a relatively dense pattern. Last night I did the maths to adjust for fewer stitches, picked up along the two sides, and got as far as the set-up row for the border lace. And yes, there was fudging involved to get the calculated stitch count and the "right" stitch count as knitted to agree. What's an extra K2tog or so when you can 'lose it' in a border of yarnovers? LOL!! I'm into the 5th skein and there's about 225 stitches on the needles. The more I work with this Highland Wool Chunky from Elann, the more I like it. The closeup photo is quite close to the 'real' color, and the lavender and mauve and blue-gray shades are so soft and subtle, all melding into one heathery color.

JM has knitted her first item with a lot of yarnovers, a simple pattern, but in need of real blocking, not just steaming. It's a good thing she's tall, because the scarf came out over 8ft long! She didn't have anything that long to block the scarf on, so we had a blocking party yesterday. I loaned her my 2ft x 2ft foam blocks; she had a padded board from her sewing things to take care of the last foot. This will be a lovely little touch of one of Cherry Tree Hill's beautiful colorways, doubled and tied loosely. We're planning a two-woman lace KAL, as soon as we decide on a pattern. She's feeling the same bit of lace-phobia that I had until I finished Kiri this summer. It's amazing how much confidence successfully knitting one lace shawl can give a knitter.

Midnight and Shadow have some favorite snoozing spots, besides the computer desk. Middy loves lying under the table lamp in the living room, on another kitty pad. And Shadow spent the morning in the Kitty Pi (Wendy's pattern), soaking up sunshine. It's difficult to see which end is which with black cats all curled up, but that's Middy's tail on the right.