Yarn! And negative knitting.

I love acquiring yarn the same way I love collecting books. There’s just something about all that potential inherent in such a little package that beckons (screams, rather) for me to take it home. Books whisper endless promises of being the best narrative I will ever read while yarn, well, yarn just skips directly to sending images of all the brilliant and beautiful things it can become (while conveniently blocking all memories of a little issue called gauge) dancing through my head. What can I do but pull out the credit card in the face of such onslaught? This is why my tiny studio apartment has three overflowing bookshelves and stacks of books scattered everywhere and my yarn stash is filled with random, project-less skeins. This year, to keep my yarn buying within limit, I decided to only buy yarn with specific projects in mind. This was great in theory except that I forgot about my tendency of always looking ahead and getting excited about next cool thing to make. So, while I did stop buying random skeins just for the sake of having the yarn, I now have enough yarn queued up for projects to last me through next year. I’m certainly don't regret my pending projects but alas, all that yarn buying means a yarn diet for the next few months. Anyway, one package of pre-planned yarn goodness arrived on Friday and I’d thought I’d share.

Ta-da!

Here is Debbie Bliss Maya for a Fiery Bolero ( IK Summer 2005) so that I wear a dress that I love but that has unfortunately placed shoulder straps to the BF's friends’ wedding. (The color is much less fiery and day-glo than the picture suggests and the dress is a lot greener)


Noro Silk Garden for a multi-directional scarf. I had admired this colorway, number 84, at the lys but am a bit disappointed with the skeins I got. The colors skew a great deal more to hot pink than I expected and there is very little of the bright green color I like in any of the skeins. Hmph.


And last but not least, WEBS Stockbridge yarn in a pretty mulberry color for a Veste Everest ( IK Fall 2005 ) for my mother’s birthday in April.


I’ve been very excited about making the vest for my mother so I went ahead and swatched and cast-on for it despite having only had three hours of sleep and not being all that mentally coherent. As you might expect, this all turned into a lesson in negative knitting. Not only did I miscalculate the gauge I needed (I’m making the vest between sizes offered in pattern)and cast on too few stitches, I also knit some unknown number of rows with two needles of different sizes before realizing. So here is where I was at the end of all that mess:


And here is where I am now


After all that, I needed some instant gratification to perk myself up. So I made this:

Say hi to Baa!

(That’s a quarter next to him for reference)