New Arrivals

I've been obsessing about the beautiful heathered colors of Elann's Sierra Aran yarn (80% wool/20% alpaca). They are so evocative of the beautiful colors of fall, of things of the earth and the ocean and the forest. In a quite unusual fashion for me, the colors to which I've been most drawn are the browns and rusts. After a couple of weeks and a lot of 'catch and release' shopping, I finally caved, in a small way. These beauties arrived yesterday. I had grandiose plans for these colors, a 14-skein project. Grudgingly admitting that a project of that scope may never get finished, I settled for a plan for a smallish stole, using only these 5 skeins. Across the bottom, from the left, are Oak, Cinnamon and Walnut, with Chestnut and Russet on top. Click on the pictures for close-ups.

I also tossed in a bit more of Elann's Highland Wool, in Deep Blue Sea; this may become another gift scarf, or it may work with Mr Joe Sangria as a shawl. I liked the combination earlier, whether just knitted together or felted. SooZ has made a terrific felted bag using these yarns and these colors, and she's posted it on her blog, Knit n Listen. The picture just doesn't quite do justice to the rich deep blue color, in spite of tweaking it.

The dark grey scarf is moving right along. I've nearly finished the 3rd skein, and I only have 1 more skein of the grey. Right now there's about a foot of one front, all of the ribbed neck, and 8in or so of the other front. The giftee is a big guy, but under 6ft, so if I can get the two fronts to at least 16in or so, it will be fine. It will grow a bit in the blocking. I forgot that I misidentified the yarn in my earlier post. This - and the camel tan of the earlier scarf - are Grignasco Nature, that I got from Smiley's Yarns a couple of years ago. It is 50% alpaca/50% merino, and it is a loosely stranded 3-ply yarn; there's a good picture of the yarn at the bottom of the sale page. There's no splitting, though, and this knits really beautifully on a US 6. I'm hoping to finish or nearly finish the scarf today. I have a couple of UFOs I want to finish up.