sweetgeorgia

Tail Feathers

Some weekend knitting yielded…

… the end of Chart 6 and the start of some peacock tail feathers.

New Silks

How about some colour to go with that sunshine?

This is three skeins of 20/2 cultivated silk (bottom) and one skein of 70% silk / 30% seacell (top). SeaCell is a new fibre made from seaweed via the lyocell process. Sound familiar? It’s the same process used to make Tencel, Bamboo, Viscose Rayon, and other cellulose fibres. The manufacturers of SeaCell are saying that all the “good health” benefits of seaweed can be enjoyed, that is absorbed, by wearing fabrics made from SeaCell. That’s some fancy transdermal vitamin delivery system.

Healthy yarn or not, the SeaCell silk is gorgeous. It takes dyes nicely, but as you can see from first photo, it gives a warmer end product. I dyed all the skeins above using the same stock solution, but the seacell skein is slightly lighter (acid dyes not reacting with the cellulose portion of the yarn?) and slightly warmer.

Last night’s guild meeting hosted Diana Sanderson and Kate Barber who came and brought skeins and woven samples of these new silks — beautiful drape, luminous, light fabrics. There was also look/fondle/discussion about silk/linen, silk/bamboo, silk/camel and stainless steel yarn(!?!).

While they talked about yarn, I did this:

A couple days ago, I switched from the H&S ebony circs back to my standard Addi circs and knitting is faster and easier now. This weekend, I might just find some time to catch up!

I heart progress.

Happy Valentine’s Day to those that are celebrating! If you are local and have left festive planning to the last minute, check out Nancyland’s foodie suggestions. I have weaving class tonight, so there will be no googly eyes over dinner. Instead, the DH and I are meeting at Finch’s for lunch. Because nothing says “I love you” like a French baguette and soup.

It’s Day 5 of the Olympics and I’m already one and a half days behind… but so far, thankfully, there has been no tinking. At row 93 of 250, it would seem like I’m quite far along, but every row increases in stitch count thereby making each row take longer and longer to complete. My initial goal was approximatly 2060 stitches per day but I’m averaging about half of that… so it might take me a month to finish?

Neither Michelle or Jen blog, but both are participating in the KO as well. Michelle is knitting her first pair of socks (Jaywalkers) and Jen is knitting Birch in KSH Trance (her first lacework). I will see if I can be stealth and sneak some of their progress shots here.

The Red Phase

Shopping your own stash is a good thing. There are beautiful yarns that I bought and put in the stash for a reason… specific things I wanted to make but then forgot about. So picking through your stash, re-organizing, poking around… it gets you inspired to make those things again. Here’s what I picked up:

Plain and simple (if you pick up the errata on PURL’s site), I’m knitting the Hourglass Sweater from “Last Minute Knitted Gifts”. I bought the Cash Iroha in Japan for this very purpose. The time has come… for cashmere.

And for the Harlot’s Knitting Olympics, I’ve picked…

This beautiful skein of Zephyr was purchased at the Salt Spring Island Fibre Festival last summer. It’s about 1170 yards but the pattern specifies 1260 yards. I’m hoping I can knit this shawl without running out of yarn… because, well, that would suck.

Light at the end of the freaking tunnel.

Could it be? A day of actual sunlight to interrupt all this glorious greyness? Lucky for us and my friend, stylish Jen, that she is getting a day without rain for her house moving this weekend.

But how about this for an even better light at the end of the sucky grey tunnel: the new Spring Rowan preview!!!! Gah!!! This may not be meant to be public yet, but hey, the files are on their server so… this is what I like:

It’s so Spring-y, ruffle-y and girlie… It’s something to look forward to. If you want to see the previews, click here, here or here… And you can also see the official Rebecca preview here… Oh, it’s all making me inappropriately happy for an ugly Vancouver winter…

And finally, this is what is consuming my current Buffy-watching time: Lotus Blossom Shawl in my handspun. Finally, from this…

…to this…

Of course, I was a silly, silly, silly girl and didn’t swatch for this. Since all my US 7 and US 8 needles were occupied, I picked a US 6 needle… And of course, the shawl is so far so tiny, it might end up as a neckwarmer… So, to hopefully remedy the situation, I’m knitting Chart 2 (stems) twice to make it nice and long…