Swapsies

Yesterday I went over to Ellen's place for the Oxford Bluestockings 4th great annual wool wind-off and yarn swap. It was lovely to see Lara who came over to Oxford from London, and also Katie and Clare who came over with their babies. I'm especially pleased that Katie came over as she brought an absolute pile of Sublime Angora Merino for the swap and I managed to score 8 balls in oatmeal - just enough (I hope) for a sweater for my Knitting Olympics project.



I'm weighing up a few different sweaters at the moment. I know from Felix's experience with this stuff whilst knitting the hourglass sweater that it pills like b*****y if you knit it at the suggested gauge so I want something that is knit on 3.5 or 3.75mm needles. I'm currently dithering between a Coraline and some sort of seamless lace sweater of my own design.

The second item picked up in the swap was nearly 100g of Jaeger Matchmaker Merino 4 ply in two shades of lilac and raspberry. I'm planning to knit a tam with these, probably to the same dimensions as the beet heid as that fits so perfectly.



Thirdly some Regia sock yarn in dark brown. I've got a little bit of lime green Regia left over from knitting Nancy Bush's birch socks so I think I could stripe it with that for some smallish socks.



And finally, a ball and a bit of Louisa Harding Kimono Angora in a green/yellow/orange colourway. Not really sure what I'll do with this, probably some fingerless mitts - either for work or for next year's present basket.



Really, the swapped yarn is a bonus. I had a lovely afternoon knitting with friends, eating cake and drinking tea, I got rid of some stash yarn which I had no idea what to do with, and got some lovely new yarn for which I mostly have definite plans.