sweetgeorgia

Knitty Fall Surprise

The Fall Surprise is up for download at the Knitty.com site: http://knitty.com/ISSUEfall04/PATTsurpriseintro.html

It’s a great idea! I like the “heart” scarf and the hat is great….but I’m not so sure about the first scarf. Well, at least it made me laugh!

I’m upset with the FBS since I’ve run out of Kitten mohair and I have all of ONE row to knit still. Should I spent a whole $9 to but another ball of mohair? No, that defeats the purpose of knitting this thing to use up leftover yarn. And I was all excited about the prospect of blocking this shawl last night…

Confessions of a shopoholic.

The very last of my gratuitous, impulse, online purchases arrived yesterday. The pink La Gran Mohair that I ordered from Herrschners to replace some nasty ugly dark dark purple mohair is now here and ready for sweater-making. It’s beautiful, soft stuff and I can just imagine how nice it will be to wear…. eventually.

And the pi?¬Æce de r?¬©sistance … the blocking board! It was 11 o’clock last night when I pinned up all the pieces of my pistachio Zara sweater. So tired, I could barely haul myself to the kitchen for a pair of scissors, but somehow I was able to get these pieces down and sprayed. I suppose I should have woven in the ends first, but I prefer to use the long strands to sew up the pieces. I don’t really know what my rush is to get this sweater done, since it’s still to warm in Vancouver to actually wear it but it would be nice to get these things out of my “in progress” pile.

Now that I’m at the end of my shopping spree, I realize that I have enough yarn to knit for a year (at least). Does anybody budget? How do you do this without going broke? Everytime I’m in Urban Yarns, I’ll get one thing — one magazine or one pair of Addi’s… and the ladies there always remark, “Oh! What self-control!”. Really??? These little buys add up! $20 today, $50 tomorrow, $150 on the weekend. Before I left for Toronto in September, I had tallied my yarn/needles spending to something like $1,500 (accumulated in about a month and a half). That’s insane…it’s like a flat tire….my wallet is leaking. If I had an extra $1,500 lying around I’d save it to buy this or this. Obviously, I have a problem.

Thank you K&T

That’s right, Tuft has arrived.

It was a happy surprise to receive my Big Wool Tuft yesterday…along with 12 balls of Phildar Brumes! It was a moment of weakness when I first purchased the Phildar Hiver magazine and decided to make this jacket. I emailed Val at Knit-n-Tyme and asked her to add the Brumes to my order (so easy…toooo easy). Bad girl. Look at what it’s done to my stash bucket now. I can’t even put the lid on now.

Can your Flower Basket Shawl do this?

Two and a half more repeats to go! I feel like I’m knitting a giant egg carton.

Sleepless in Savanna

I can’t believe these things cause me to lose sleep.

I have that pile of Jo Sharp Silkroad Aran Tweed that I’ve been trying to find a pattern for and it’s made me a little crazy. After looking through book after book of Jo Sharp patterns, I’ve decided that she makes gorgeous yarn but kind of boring patterns (sorry Jo fans). Happily, I just happened to stop by Urban Yarns and picked up a copy of the new Rebecca 28 (in English!) and found this lovely yellow sweater. But said lovely sweater is to be made in GGH Savanna, a chunky weight yarn (14 sts x 10 cm) and all I have is this tweedy red aran weight yarn (18 sts x 10 cm).

I couldn’t sleep last night because I was trying to calculate: if I made a different size sweater with the Jo Sharp yarn would actually end up being the right size to fit me? I figured that if I make the largest size using my new gauge I would end up with 38.25″ at the bust measurement. This pattern, as written, seems to offer each size between 8 to 10″ of ease. Isn’t that a lot? Won’t that make for a super-baggy sweater? So if my modifications land me with 4 or 5 inches of ease, I’ll have a nice kind of close-fitting sweater which is what I’d like. (…mmmust resist urge to …. order Savanna onlineee…)