I finished the body and one sleeve on cherie amour, tried it on and hated it I’ve frogged the sleeve, more for the ritual of the thing than because I need to immediately reclaim the yarn (I haven’t yet bothered frogging the body, and in any case I haven’t decided what else to do with it), and am now halfway through winding my first skein of Cascade 220 into a ball for the elegant ribbed stockings. In the process of doing this, I’ve asked partner-R to buy me a swift and/or a ball winder for my birthday. I hate balling skeins.

The cascade feels lovely, though, and I’m hopeful of it producing nice stockings, although they might just be for wearing around the house – I’m not sure the yarn is spun tightly enough to survive ordinary wear. And they’re just too pretty to be hidden under trousers or long skirts, but at the same time too pretty-pretty to be displayed in public. But since I’ve spent today lounging around the house wearing a shortish skirt with stripy knee socks (not hand knitted), I think I’m likely to get some use out of them

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The Knitting and Stitching Show haul

Yesterday I went to the Knitting and Stitching Show at Alexandra Palacewith Frax and assorted others, and had a fabulous time

Fraxhad set herself a yarn-buying budget; I had done no such thing,although I had made a list of the projects on my queue that I wanted tobuy yarn for, with yarn requirements. I didn’t buy everything on thelist (it wasn’t that kind of list – my cashflow couldn’t have taken thestrain), but all but three of the things I bought were on the list (andtherefore bought with a specific project in mind), and two (or possiblyall) of those are sock yarn, so any old sock project will suffice.

So, the haul (all wool, it occurs to me now):

(Top picture) Three skeins of Cascade 220 from Get Knitted in purple (this willbecome a theme). These are for the Elegant Ribbed Stockings fromFavorite Socks. It’s a bit on the heavy side, being more of a lightaran than a DK or sport, but the yardage seemed pretty close, and thesocks are knit on peculiarly large needles. We shall see… I canalways repurpose this as a scarf or something if it doesn’t work. Ialso got 3m of beautiful hand-dyed silk ribbon to thread through theeyelets if the yarn becomes socks. The ribbon is purple, too.

(Secondand third pictures) One large (350g?) skein of variegated purples andblues. This is a no-name (from a no-name company as well – just one guywho has no shop and no website and just does shows). I’m not evencompletely certain of the weight – it’s not labelled, and I might havemisremembered, because I did look at a lot of yarn yesterday. I startedoff thinking it was about DK, but I’ve measured and it’s 20wpi, whichseems like sock to me. This might be a clapotis – it’s the one yarn (asalluded to above) which isn’t destined for a specific project, but it’sgorgeous, and was very cheap indeed.

(Fourth picture) Two skeins of Cherry Tree Hill supersock from the Woolly Workshop, inpurple (the same yarn as my Baudelaires). This is for Clessidra, whichI’ve wanted to knit ever since I first saw the pattern. And it was 20%off

Half a skein of some very bright red and pinkvariegated sock yarn, another no-name from the same stall as thepurples and blues (which had lots of gorgeous stuff for very littlemoney, including some amazingly soft silk and mohair in a shade ofpurple which was too pinky for my taste, so I resisted the urge to buyit despite not having a project in mind for it), which Frax and Ibought to split. It certainly make two, and possibly even three pairsof socks each, and was also very cheap. (This is one of the yarns Ihave no plan for, but I plan to knit socks in general, so it’s not aproblem.) No photo of this one, because it’s at Frax’s house.

(Fifth picture) Five skeins of unnamed space dyed wool that is very much like Manos delUruguay in – you guessed it – purple (from lovely people – the firststall we looked at, and both mine and Frax’s favourite – Knit 4 Fun).Variegated this time – different purples and some flashes of fuchsia.It’s very similar colours to my silly stocking hat. This is for CherieAmour, which I’ve also loved since first sight. And I’ve swatched itnow, to perfect gauge on both needles, so I might just cast on. Toomany projects OTN? How is that even possible!

(Sixth picture) One skein of not-purple: Dream in Color Smooshy from Socktopus innearly-solid burgundy. This is for the Embossed Leaves from FavoriteSocks. And it’s gorgeously soft.

(Bottom picture)Finally, the other not-yet-assigned yarn, one skein of Knitwitches sock yarn in, yes, purple variegated.

I’mreally happy with my purchases. Only two of them (the Cascade and theCherry Tree Hill) are things I could just as easily have got online,and the Cascade was worth it to choose a colour in person, and theCherry Tree Hill was worth it because it was discounted. Some of theothers are available online, but I hadn’t properly heard of them tohave gone looking, and some I just wouldn’t have been able to getanywhere else. They’re all absolutely beautiful, gorgeous colours,lovely feel, and I’m eager to knit with each and every one ofthem!    

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I’m knitting again My wrist isn’t completely recovered, but it’sbasically OK unless I use it a lot, or bear weight on it at certainangles. So I’ve actually worked on (counts) four different projects inthe last week. Four! I should get round to taking some photos to provethis, but words will have to suffice in the mean time.

I’ve finished knitting the Urban Rustic gloves, with added cuffs tomake them longer. The sticking point now is weaving in theapproximately fifty million ends and closing up the holes. I’ve doneabout half of one glove, but can’t quite bring myself to finish. I’mwell aware that this is ridiculous.

I’ve finished the first Jaywalker, at last. I even took it over tofemale-friend-R’s house to show her and get her to try it on before Imade the second, but then I forgot about it and didn’t show her. I’mtaking a break before I make the next anyway, because I got very boredof knitting them.

I’ve picked up the red cardigan again, but it’s hard going – it’stop-down all-in-one raglan, and I’m approaching the point where I cansplit off the sleeves, so it’s very long rows of boring boring stockingstitch, and it’s on the Denise needles, which aren’t really quiteslippery enough for the yarn, so there’s an awful lot of movingstitches around.

In an effort to make me knit the red cardigan, I’ve cast on somethingelse. It does make sense, honestly. If my other project is complicated,I’ll have to have the cardigan as TV knitting because it’s simple anddoesn’t need looking at. The theory is that if I’m doing it while I’mthinking about something else, I might not notice the very, very longtime it takes to knit a single row. So for this to work, the otherproject has to need me to look at it and think about it. And since thecardigan is large, the second project should probably be small: it’sPomatomus, knit with the tweedy blue Trekking I bought in Cornwall. Ispent a while looking through sock patterns to find one that I thoughtwould work with either the Trekking or the Opal handpaint, and this wasthe combination that grabbed me. God only knows what I’m going to dowith the Opal. It might have been a poor purchasing decision – maybeI’ll see if I can trade it with someone.

But in the most exciting knitting news, I’m going to the Knitting andStitching Show this weekend with Frax and assorted other knitters, andI’m really looking forward to it. I need to spend some timewith my Ravelry queue in preparation for the trip, so I know how muchof different weights I ‘need’ for different things I’m considering – itwould be a terrible calamity to find the perfect yarn for a project butnot be able to remember how much it requires.

So, things I’m actively planning to make, that I need to look up before the show:

• Elegant ribbed stockings from Favorite Socks (plain or semi-solid sport weight)
• Embossed leaves socks, ditto (semi-solid or muted variegated sock yarn)
• Henry from Knitty (burgundy sock yarn, for large-male-friend-R)
• Entrelac shawl (something variegated)

I think that’s all on the yarn front. I am not buying acardigansworth of anything, because I have one cardigan OTN and anotherin planning (and am considering frogging and reknitting my Rogue), sono large piles of aran-weight for me, no matter how beautiful. If it’s very beautiful,I’ll buy smallish quantities and make hats and/or scarves. Or gloves.Or maybe even bags. But no more large garments, apart from the entrelacshawl, and that’s only on the list because it specifically requiresvariegated, which I otherwise try not to buy because it’s too patternedfor me when it’s knitted up.

I have needle wants, too. I want some 2.25mm circs to fill the gap inmy sock tools; I need to check what size needles I’ve used for therandom lace jumper and get some pointy lace needles for it to increasethe chance of me ever going back to it (just too fiddly with bluntDenises), and I’d like some Addis to replace the Denises in the redcardigan too. Hell, who am I kidding? I’d like Addis in all sizes andall lengths, please. But no straight needles, even if they are the mostbeautiful thing ever, because I hate knitting with them. They can bemade of beautifully carved amethyst and I won’t buy them. Well, maybeif they really were amethyst I’d buy them as an ornament

Finally, I’d like some undyed yarn, probably just sock weight, becauseI’ve had so much fun dyeing that I want to do more. But mostly I wantto spend the day with my friends talking about knitting and droolingover all the shiny

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