A Gift

There is a special feeling you get when you receive an unexpected package in the mail. You are more excited when you see that it came from a far away friend. What can top the feeling you get when you find it turns out to be a present for you? I'm treasuring that feeling now with much thanks to my dear friend Lene at Dances With Wool and Fine Stitches.

She sent me two beautiful skeins of yarn. Sadly, my lighting options and camera do not do them justice. I'm already enjoying them, and I'm still in the very beginning of the imagining-what-I-can-make-with-them stage. I think the green might want to be a pair of socks, but maybe not. They are beckoning the lace needles too.

And look at this lovely bag! It is large enough for a sock or kitchen towel project, and small enough I may be able to stick it in my suitcase for an upcoming trip. Thank you, Dear Leena!

In Queue

Sweaters for the Artist and for the Engineer are next in my knitting queue. I've had fun scouring the internet in search of some yarn.

Of course, the Engineer wants his to be green. If he had his way, every article of clothing he ever wore would be green. So I mandated that at least one other color be mixed with the precoius green. His sweater will be knitted with a four ply wool, half green and red and white flecks included. I was hoping to show you a photo, but it has not arrived yet. It will lend itself to a Christmas-y look. But I'm hoping a rather plain, every-day pattern will make it suitable for all cool seasons. I have not decided on a pattern yet.

A few days later I ordered this yarn for the Artist. She and I are in love with the colors. I twill look so nice with her skin tone, hair color and her eyes. The search is on for a pattern for this sweater too. I'd like it to be something she could wear every day or something she could dress up by wearing it with a skirt.
I'll need to search for the right needles too. This super soft yarn does not have a lot of twist, so I think I'll be knitting a little more tightly with it to protect the finished fabric.

New Yarn

I have some patterns that call for using ribbon yarns. I selected a pattern for a simple shell from the growing stash of patterns I've collected. (The link is not the exact pattern, but the style is similar). The pattern says the sweater can be made in gauges of 15 - 20 stitches per four inches. My pattern did not specify yarn, so I thought it would be a good pattern to try.

The pattern showed three sample swatches with different yarns. One was 100% cotton, one was 100% rayon, and one was a rayon, polyester, metallic thread mix. This emboldened me to go ahead and plunge into the synthetic world with an Ebay purchase.

I fell in love with the peacock blue color of this yarn. And it was within my budget! (When will I learn that this is probably a big red flag?!) The yarn I bought is 100% polyamid microfaser. When I read that, it did not tell me much. It may as well have said 100% synthetic.

When I got my beautiful blue bundle in the mail I learned what polyamid microfaser is. I felt a strand of the yarn and it struck me that I have seen this fabric and felt this texture before. Then it dawned on me: It is interfacing material. I had bought hundreds of half-inch wide yards of bright blue, non-fusible interfacing!!!

Then I had a conversation with myself. "Okay. This will be interesting. How can I save this project? How did I get to the point where I need to save a project I have not even swatched yet!"

The yarn felt interesting. Not bad at all, just different. How it would launder? Here it is unwashed:
then wet from hand washing with dish soap:

and dry again: It looks like it will be just fine.

I made five swatches to find a needle size I liked and to fit one of the pattern guides. Also, it was a new stitch pattern and I wanted to be sure I liked it in this strange fabric. The pattern is called Mistake Rib stitch (Stitches in multiples of four + 3 stitches: *K2, P2* Repeat ending with K2, P1). How aptly named for this project!


And so I began.