Lace Blob

I am participating in the Diamond Fantasy KAL hosted by the designer, Sivia. The tips and tricks discussed on the group have been very helpful. Yesterday, I progressed to the 2nd repeat of chart B, and decided that to reduce risk, I would place a stitch marker between each 12 stitch repeat. Well, on one of the rows, you have to "borrow" a stitch from the next 12 stitch section. If I hadn't of heard about this tip on the KAL group, I would have spent hours trying to figure out what I was doing wrong. It's little tips like this that make a KAL so worthwhile. Here is my progress as of Sunday:



I didn't bother with a close up because the lace just looks like a blob on the needles. Since Sunday, I have switched to circ's and progressed to the 2nd repeat of Chart B. It's looking really lovely. The blooming crocuses* aren't bad either, eh? I am using Fleece Artist merino sock in a lovely variegated pink. I think this will make the perfect spring scarf.

*confirmed through dictionary.com

Good Bagel

The sun was shining yesterday and my friend Barb came over to knit for a while. She allowed Bagel to model her newly spun Elektra Lite. I love how the white adds to the colorplay of this skein.

Another view of the aran

It is so difficult to photograph dark yarn indoors. Yesterday, we had the first non-rainy, moderately-warm, weekend day all winter. I took the kids to the zoo so the animals could see how much the monkeys have grown. And I asked the nanny to snap an outdoor photo of me wearing The Aran. Here's the small view:



And click here to download the big picture. Kerry, are you happy now? :-)

Definitely not enough

I completed the back of the Square sweater and sewed the shoulder seams together yesterday. Matress stitch on garter is a piece of cake, but the stockinette sections left a bit to be desired! I have 18g of the light green left. This is definitely not enough to knit two striped sleeves. I will be ordering on-line as soon as I am done writing this post. I have 45g of the dark color remaining, and considering this is a long discontinued color of Rowan wool cotton that I purchased in London, I am pretty sure it will be impossible to find any more. (Holly, a deep blueish-green just in case you have some in stash) I plan to wind this into two equal weight balls. The sleeves are knit top down, so worse comes to worse, the sleeves will be a) short or b) different colors.

Diamond Fantasy KAL

There's a new button in the sidebar - for Sivia Harding's Diamond Fantasy KAL.



This beautiful lace project is designed to be used with fingering weight yarn - so it should be right up my alley. I am going to use some Fleece Artist merino sock previously purchased from Simply Socks Yarn Co. Now all I have to do is choose the color! If the sun comes out again tomorrow, I'll try to remember to take photos of the few skeins that I have to choose from. I can't find the colorways on the website right now (must be out of stock), but I know one of the colors is Turquoise - how prettty would THAT be for spring?

Thank you to my SP7 for a lovely surprise which was waiting for me when I got home from work yesterday. 2 hanks of Fleece Artist roving (do you see a trend here?) and some yummy Canadian chocolate - cafe nougat bark. YUM! I absolutely love having an international SP - the treasures are all so unique! Thank you SP!