Now... and update on the fun I've been having whilst not updating my blog ;)
On Saturday Glenda (www.bluecorona.blogspot.com) and I went to Abbotsford to take in Fibres West 2011. It was my first fibre festival ever so I had no idea what to expect. What we weren't expecting was to be flying down the highway at 110km an hour and for a dumptruck to lose his load of dirt and GIGANTIC boulders right on the highway! Lucky for us we were in the lane farthest away from him and manged to swerve around the bigger rocks but we were still running over rocks the size of melons and plowing through a bunch of mud... my poor car is filthy now! It was a terrifying experience to be sure! But after that, we were safely on our way and made it to Abbotsford just after the show opened. It was basically a local shopping extravaganza. Most of the local indie dyers were there... Sweet Georgia Yarns, Indigo Moon, Unwind, West Coast Fibre Works and a few yarn stores, namely Funknits that is going out of business. I went with a plan in mind for what to buy, since I just needed some yarn for my Spring Leaves Wrap. In the morning before we left for the show I found a package of yarn I'd ordered outside my apartment (obviously sitting there since Friday sometime...) It was the nine skeins of Misti Alpaca Sport that I bought from a fellow Raveler. It's a beautiful brown/gray color and oh so soft, what with it being 100% baby alpaca! My concern was that it wouldn't be very 'springy' so I went to the show with an open mind as to something to make it out of. What I found was the most amazing purple dk weight Alpaca that would have made the most amazing wrap... only it would have cost me $70-$80... Lucky for me, Glenda is very practical and talked me out of it. Instead, I bought a 200yard spool of glittery teal thread to hold with my alpaca to give it a bit of dazzle... and then I read the pattern and realized that it probably won't work at all! I'll probably end up beading the ends of the shawl instead... which sort of makes me mad cause by the time I spent the money on the yarn, the money on the thread that won't work, the money I'll have to spend on beads to give the brown/gray enough glitter to jazz it up a bit, I'll have spent more than the money I should have just spent on the purple yarn! Anyway, not to worry, I think teal beads on the brown/gray will be gorgeous... I'm sort of leaning toward a silver lined orange bead tho... we'll see!
So, after I realized that I wasn't going to be buying anything for the Spring Leaves project, my next focus was to buy something that I could use for the reverse engineering project that Glenda and I are doing (altho to be honest, I've just sort of (without asking) inserted myself into the reverse enginnering experiment without asking permission... Glenda: Can I play?)
To that end, I bought what can only be considered a massive surprise to most people who know me... I bought Malabrigo! No, I'm not even kidding! If you know me at all, you'll probably have heard my very strong opinion on Malabrigo Worsted. I don't really think it's that soft and it pills like a mofo, causing your project to rapidly look like it's your cat's blanket that you've stolen from him and are using in an emergency to keep warm! However, what I bought was Malabrigo Sock yarn, which I understand doesn't pill as badly... It's superwash (which I usually steer away from, but the experiment has a lot of stockinette, so it should work fine), so it shouldn't pill too badly and it's plied so that should help it's durability!
I also bought (being enabled by someone who knows me but that for the life of me I couldn't remember who she was... sorry about that girl!) three skeins of Merino/Silk/Bamboo/Nylon sock yarn in a gorgeously soft natural color. One skein is for pairing with my Sweet Georgia super secret zombie ball for a lovely pair of mitts and my new hat design and the other two are to dye! I've been getting grief because while I do have a lot of hats and scarves and a pair of mitts, not one item matches the other so I look a bit like clown barf if I have to wear my hat, mitts and a scarf out!
I'm finishing my GW on my lunch today! I have the last stitch pattern to go and then I'm done! It's already taller than me and that's dry and straight off the needles, so I can only imagine the size it will be when it's blocked... even just the act of getting it wet should grow it exponentially!
After that, I have a race to the finish to try and get my purple sugar wrap done by Wednesday evening! If I can do three repeats today at knitting, tomorrow over lunch and the evening and then two on Wednesday at lunch and maybe one while the other wraps are soaking, then I can probably finish in time to be able to block it along side my GW... it's ambitious but it'll be nice to have it done too!
1 comments:
"Lucky for me, Glenda is very practical and talked me out of it."
Please tell this to Mike! :)
I'm excited to see your GIANT GW next to my mini gw! Why can't you use the teal thread along with the misti alpaca - I know its knit from the centre out, but you could still use it in the last repeat on each side (ie: the ends), couldn't you? BTW, you have to explain that pattern to me - I read it late last night, and it did not make sense to me! :)
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