There's nothing like new yarn to light a fire under your knitting and this yarn is, at least, new to me. Yesterday Katie invited all the Bluestockings round to hers for the 2nd great annual wind-off and yarn-swap. I took along 2 skeins of silver Debbie Bliss Pure Silk (a guilt purchase in Port Meadow when I felt I had gone in once too often without buying anything), a ball of purple/blue Trekking XXL for which I just wasn't feeling it, 2 balls of Debbie Bliss Merino aran in dark green and one ball of DK in bright red. It's true that one knitter's unwanted stash is another knitter's treasure. Amongst the unwanted yarn that the rest had brought were nearly four skeins of Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock multi, two in purple/grey, one in green/brown and one in yellow/black. After the usual stages of polite "after you", "well if you're sure you don't want it" and "it's mine, all mine" had been gone through (much to the amusement of Katie's husband) I ended up with one of the purple/grey skeins and the yellow and black which I knew straight away were going to be a pair of Jaywalkers.
Once everyone had negotiated for what they were really interested in we started picking off the rest and I snaffled two part balls of dark denim Regia, which should make a pair of short socks with some of my lighter denim Regia for heels and toes.
Finally I picked up a pile of oddments in Lamb's Pride, Manos del Uruguay, Noro Silk Garden and Maya - these are all yarns that I've never knit with so it will be fun to see what they're like.
Quite apart from thinking Christmas had come around again early after the yarn swap I had such a great time. It was lovely to see everyone, especially Lara and Abby who can't get along on Wednesdays very often at the moment, and we just had a great afternoon knitting, chatting and eating slice after slice of Katie's gorgeous marmelade cake.
Katie and I also had a breakthrough on the Hopscotch test sock after we discovered the three wrong numbers that meant she had had to knit the heel three times! She had actually finished the heel by the time I left so may even have finished the whole sock by Wednesday - very exciting. I'm then going reknit the sock from the amended pattern and then it will only need some better photos before it's ready to publish (yay!).
After the yarn swap there was yarn winding. I wound the three skeins of louet Gems from the Knitting and Stitching show, Ellen wound some hideously fine merino laceweight which snapped once and even jumped off the ballwinder and Helen wound her first skein of yarn using the winder and discovered just how pretty yarn cakes are.
The prizes didn't stop there as when I got home I discovered that the boyfriend had bought me this as my anniversary pressie. After eight years he's finally catching on!
Luckily the sizes are all from 3 months to 2 years which means that there's plenty of time to knit all the patterns that I want to before Laurie grows too big for them. What with this and the Jaeger sale at Masons temptation is coming at me from all sides but I'm determined to stick to my yarn diet for a couple of months at least - or at least until all my yarn can fit in the one box again!
