Lots of Yarny Goodness

Whee! I'm having Christmas in November, and I'm really thinking I have to tell DH that I've already had my gifts and he can forget the shopping and wrapping.

I've recently bought 3 new books, which satisfies both the knitterly and the bookish me. Melissa Leapman's new Cables Untangled is both a primer and encyclopedia for cables. Having just finished 3 cabled scarves, I'm now a fan of cables, and an Elann knitter clued me in about how great it is. Some of the designs, especially the Aran sweaters, are really for knitters who live in much colder climates, but the motifs are gorgeous and I look forward to knitting my way through lots of them.

And of course there's the new XRX book, Victorian Lace Today. OMG! When this arrived yesterday, I had to go do errands so that I wouldn't spend the rest of the day reading avidly through the designs and history. I will savor this book, learn from it and take joy in knitting the designs.

Amy Singer's Knit Wit is based on a recommendation from another Elann knitter, and when I first opened it, I thought, "Oh, drat, this was a mistake!" But happily, I found 3 designs that I liked enough to bookmark besides the pattern I wanted.

Then we have yarn. WEBS' new hand-dyed laceweight is absolutely wonderful to touch, and the colors couldn't be lovelier. The yarn is 80% alpaca, 20% silk, in the Atlantis colorway. There are 950yds in this 4oz skein. And here's some Di.Vé Autonno (from Cascade) that I couldn't resist last week at my LYS, Unwind. You see 2 different colorways, the bottom one, which segues from light browns to darker brown/mocha and then to rusty tones; the upper one has olive greens, browns and aquas. This is 100% fine merino wool, loosely plied in a sort of marl, and with a slow and beautiful color change. This feels like heaven to knit and is even softer knitted up. And it is durable: The bit of scarf you see is in the 5th or 6th version; I've changed patterns 3 times, revised the width, frogged for 2 different mistakes, and it still feels wonderful and doesn't show anything other than a lovely bit of halo. It currently is done in Brioche Stitch, on size 10.5US needles.


And then there's this adorable T-shirt, which is especially apropos after my scarf frog pond incident. One of the knitters on the About.com knitting forum mentioned this picture, and was kind enough to give me a link to the vendor, Artemis Imaging. I am probably going to wear this shirt to my knitting group today, lol! Remember, you can click on these pictures to see a larger view.

There has been knitting progress. Having finished the 3rd gift scarf, I started on the boys' hats I want to finish for my DGSs-by-love in Alaska. The base yarn for both of these is Nashua's Creative Focus worsted superwash. The orange one has bands of Bernat's Camouflage acrylic; this is for an 11yo, who is currently in an orange and black phase. The stripes on the blue one are Plymouth Encore, and will be adorable on the 6yo, with his pale blond hair and blue eyes. All the yarn is worked double-stranded on size 10s. The pattern for these earflap hats is courtesy of Jayne. It is a very quick knit, easy to memorize and easy to tweak.

I asked DH to take some additional pictures of the blue cabled scarf which I finished last week, so here's a much better view of the color and the cable pattern. He's a talented amateur photographer, though he hasn't pulled out his non-automatic camera in a couple of years.