Early Valentine!

My Socks That Rock lightweight arrived in the mail this morning from Christine along with a really cute little tag and some heart-shaped chocolates.



Between the light and the not-so-great camera phone picture this is not a representative picture of the colour of this yarn. The colourway is Blue Moonstone and it's kind of a sky blue/bluey-grey with some undyed patches. I know it must have been a bit of a wrench for Christine to part with this (just remember it's in a good cause!) but I can assure her that it's gone to a good home, there'll be lots of other sock yarn to keep it company and I have big plans for this little skein - it's going to look so pretty knit up.

I'm nearly through the first ball in my Tatami - once I've finished the first ball I'll try to do some knitting maths to check whether I'll have enough yarn to complete. I really should do, given that I'm knitting to gauge and the yarn I'm using has a longer yardage than the recommended yarn. I'm (not actually sure how that squares with the fact that I had to go down two needle sizes to get gauge but I guess it will all work out). I'm up to the second lot of side decreases anyway. Tatami looks like a huge project (especially if you knit a giant one like Felix) but the extra width gained from the drop stitches means that your rows are much shorter than for a conventional cardi (yay) so at the moment it seems to be motoring. This is partly helped by the fact that I've made one slight adjustment to the pattern and am knitting, rather than purling, my drop stitches - so much faster. I can't see that it will make too much difference to the overall size (I swatched the other way!) but am perfectly prepared to listen to arguments to the contrary and/or be struck down by the knitting gods for my hubris.

Yarn winding

Not being able to face the thought of winding all our newly acquired stash from the Knitting and Stitching show herself* Katie invited the Bluestockings up to her place on Wednesday evening for a yarn winding/pizza and cake eating session.

When I got there Emma was already winding yarn and Ruth was knitting her umpteenth strip of garter stitch chain-mail for a production of King John at the Old Fire Station next week. I had a bit of a disaster winding the Helen's Lace Black Watch. I'd nearly finished the first attempt when Katie pointed out that I was winding it anti-clockwise which meant it wouldn't centre pull. I then was part way through re-winding it clockwise from the outside of the ball when the thing just jumped off the ball-winder (I may have been too enthusiastic). This meant I then had to re-re-wind the first part of the yarn from the inside of the ball before re-winding the second part from the outside of the original ball. After all this saga the 100g of hand-dyed merino DK seemed to wind up in about 30 seconds.

Felix brought along her in-progress Tatami (which is going to be more of a chunky kimono) knit from charity shop recycled wool, some cheesy stitch markers and some gorgeous rhubarb crumble made with stem ginger and coriander seeds (the recipe is here).





I've decided to knit the Peacock Feathers shawl from Fiddlesticks knitting. The pattern is quite bold so I don't think it will get lost in the variegated yarn too much and luckily I was able to borrow the pattern from Katie so I can get started as soon as I've finished the Kiri.

I also borrowed the pattern for the Tatami cardigan which I queued on Ravelry almost as soon as I'd tried on Katie's version in 21st Century yarn the other week (it's pretty). As a reward for reaching the final repeat in Kiri I worked a couple of swatches for it last night, one in Jaeger (sigh!) Matchmaker Merino 4-ply (nice but a bit too drapey) and one in Rowan Wool Cotton. I don't think I'll use either (although I haven't dropped the stitches in the Wool Cotton one yet) but it was fun to try out the pattern and a nice change from knitting lace. It turns out that knitting swatches is really appealing if you think of them as a chance for a tiny bit of knitting that's completely different from the marathon project you're slogging away at.





Kiri progress update: just finished the last repeat this evening. Hopefully I can work the edging tomorrow and have it blocking on Sunday!



* Apparently she has better things to do with her time, like setting up our amazing new website

Knitting and Stitching show 2007

Despite a few raised eyebrows when I returned home with the new additions to my stash I think I was fairly restrained at the Knitting and Stitching show on Sunday (although if there had been any deep reds or blues remaining I think I might have dived head first into the sale pile of discontinued Jaeger at Black Sheep). Ellen picked up a bag of green Matchmaker DK and Aliki one of grey Matchmaker 4-ply. I wandered around hugging a bag of charcoal 4-ply for a while before putting it back as I really would have been buying it from pure nostalgia and I'm sure there will be some single balls for socks and gloves floating around for some time yet.

There was a lot of very tempting fibre on offer from UK Alpacas and especially from the Sheep Shop (purveyors of Wensleydale Longwool) who were offering 500 gram footballs of combed white or black Wensleydale top for £8-£9. Luckily I had time to reflect over lunch and reached the considered opinion that spinning 500 grams of fibre on a drop spindle was probably not as much fun as you might think at first. I went back a couple of time to fondle but stayed strong. I also fell in love with the Black Hills Corriedale which had been spun with the lanolin in and smelled just amazing*. Fortunately they didn't seem too weirded out by my sniffing their yarn and as they're local to us we might manage a trip to their show room some day.

There were lots and lots of lovely things on display including some sweet knitting earrings, and some beautiful kits including these very cute knitted tea cosies from Laughing Hens



We saw the knitted river - it's huge. I especially liked the square that someone had knit with a sailing boat. There was just the one so it looked like it was on a vast ocean.



I spent a lot of the time looking for yarn for a Tatami after trying on Katie's at the knitting group last Wednesday. It's a beautiful pattern and it looks amazing in the 21st Century yarn that's she's knitted it in (although apparently dropping the stitches is a complete arse due to the yarn's grabbiness). However, between there not being a colourway that I really loved and getting rather confused over the yardage I decided to wait until I had a chance to swatch the pattern with some of my stash yarns.

The other thing that I was keeping my eyes open for was some laceweight to knit a shawl to match a dress for my cousin's wedding in December and I found just the thing at the Get Knitted stand straight after lunch - a gorgeous skein of Lorna's Laces Helen's Lace in the Black Watch colourway.



I just need to pick a shawl pattern now. I love the Fiddlesticks Peacock Feathers shawl and I think it would suit the yarn. There are also a couple in A Gathering of Lace that I really like. The main thing is that I want it to be an all-in-one piece of knitting as I don't want to have to knit a huge separate border (a la Print O' the Wave) against a deadline! Mind you, what with this, and the POTW, and the Kiri (up to repeat no. 10 btw) this is looking like a good time to invest in some blocking wires and I even found a UK seller. Aliki, Helen and I did look out for them yesterday but either no one was stocking them or they'd all been nabbed earlier on in the show.

Another sad absence were the Handweaver's Studio as Aliki was thinking about a Swift or ballwinder and I really want a niddy noddy as my landlord obviously didn't have winding yarn in mind when she chose chairs for the flat!

My other purchases were some more Clover locking stitch markers (I love these little guys), the Thelonious sock pattern by Cookie A (yes it's available online but I've never got around to buying it) from Knit n Caboodle and some Louet Gems sock yarn from Foreign Strand.



Rather stupidly I bought a skein more than I need for my sock pattern but it's lovely yarn and will "come in for something". Aliki also bought the Twisted Flower pattern so we can have a sock pattern swap later on.

The Louet Gems was my final purchase of the day (made rather on impulse after I failed to find Tatami yarn) and we left the show at 4pm in plenty of time for a huge cup of tea at Paddington before our train home.



* I'm the sort of person who wanders through the M&S jumper section on rainy days going "Mmm wet sheep".