Latest Yarn

Emeralds & turquoise, violets & boysenberries, infused in black. Outrageous, playful, colorful, enigmatic. Vibrating life force in each and every feather.
Description: An ever so slightly heavier version of our silk thread. Still thread-like, just a step up from cobweb.
All measurements are approximate.
Content: 100% Silk
Weight: 3.5 oz / 99g
Length: 1,125 yds / 1,028m
Gauge: laceweight

The picture and above text comes from Blue Moon Fibres

I have been looking for the perfect yarn to do an Icarus shawl for about a year. I have bought one or two but for some reason they just didn't look right or feel right. I don't know, one of those funny annoying things. I am hoping, however, that this is it. Silk and plenty of it in a beautifully dramatic colourway and due to the bird like name - Rooky- rather appropriate I feel.

Wow!

Blueberry Hill by Posh Yarn

Wolves I tell yer, wolves! Who'd have thought that it would have been such a frenzy! I got the giggles it was so bad. There I was at 6 sharp, poised as I said earlier. But it was no good. The fastest 'putor wins I suppose. I missed both the yarns pictured below but managed to snag my third choice, blueberry hill, a lace weight 100 per cent cashmere and I had to shift I can tell you.

Still, very happy with it and have decided that I will do Icarus in this which gives me a few more days to finish cobweb and think of an equally lovely project for the Samba yarn that I originally bought for the Icarus but somehow it just didn't gel. I think I will do something from Victorian Lace Today with it, perhaps the small shoulder wrap, but that will be sometime next year I think!


Update
Yarn arrived on 4th July, hurrah! Really quick service Dee, thanks. And I have spun 100 per cent cashmere yarn, so I knew how soft it was going to be, but whenever I do something it never quite meets my approval. This yarn is absolutely scrumptious, it is called blueberry with good reason, it has a purple bloom running through it and it is a soft matte texture. What a pure pleasure it will be to work it. Yay!
But first Cobweb, which needs to be ripped back three rows :( and I am dreading it. The Sherriff has had such a nightmare with ripping back Kid silk and she is an expert, what's a poor moron like me supposed to do?

Oh Rats!!

One of my favourite things to yell when things are not going to plan... if only I had remembered that this morning.
Took my mum to hospital this morning and knowing that there would probably be a lot of hanging about I took my knitting as well. Cobweb is not that portable as I have not yet photocopied the chart to cart about and the pattern book is not to be taken lightly anywhere.

So out came Icarus and the little sheets, written instructions and chart one. Since posting on the KAL have sorted my problem with the chart - duh, such a simpleton - and so I had high hopes that I could make some progress today. And I did. I managed a fair bit, half way though the chart and I dropped a stitch.
Okay I can cope, but it shot down the rows and I didn't have a crochet hook to rescue it. I tried but it looked appalling after I had finished. Thought about the many varied and exotic cuss words I know and decided that I was too flipping angry to use any of them and shouted OH NUTS in the middle of the waiting area. Unfortunately I realised seconds later that this is not necessarily the politest of things to shout anyway, it being vernacular for some things that ladies don't have and collapsed into red faced giggles, reduced to teenager all over again.

And alas, my darling icarus has been ripped right back for I think the seventh time :(

Never mind, tomorrow I dance.

Baby Icarus

Here she is, ripped back five times already, I kid you not! I cannot get the stitches on the kneedles to match the count on the pattern and I feel too much of a moron to go on the KAL and ask for help, I suppose that is why I joined it, but even so...


Update
Okay, it is now 11:30 pm and thanks to Amanda, I plucked up courage to post on the Icarus KAL earlier my problem with the stitch count that made this look spookily like a posing pouch (ewwww, thanks Jethro - I think). And I have found out that I have, in fact, been knitting a one sided Icarus, the poor dab wouldn't have even got off the ground let alone made it to the stratosphere with only one wing now would he?

So rip it up and start again...again. But now there is hope, for now I understand the PDF chart. Always a good thing to understand the pattern of the thing that you are knitting. I am cheered that it was a simple error. However, I wonder what time I will get to sleep if I cast on again now as I am itching to do...
No, I must be sensible and go to bed. Children have no mercy on knitting fools

Icarus

Cast on!
Chart one,
here I come.
At last!

Icarus Update

And my Posh Yarn arrived this morning too. Off to the library tomorrow to enlarge the Icarus chart and then I'm off!

Huzzah!

One Step Closer to Icarus!

Samba, cobweb weight, cashmere & silk blend

V downloaded Icarus for me from Mim Knits last night. Oh happy, happy girl. It doesn't take much see, just my own way most of the time. And I get the feeling that Samba will be on its way this week so there is a good chance that I will be able to take some knitting with me on holiday next week. This is a relief to V poor dear as I think that he is getting rather fed up of carting my louet around all the time. Knitting is at least a lot more portable.

V looked at the charts last night as he was downloading them and commented that he would never in a month of Sundays be able to understand them. I assured him that I probably wouldn't either considering that I knit like a bear as I have said before. However, this shawl just bit me and I had to have a go. I have known all my life how to be stubborn. So I am relying on pure bloody mindedness to see me through. And failing all else there is always Mum, the expert, to take over when I'm ready to collapse.

Then I went on line just now to have another gloat on Posh Yarn and saw that the silk yarn that Rose fell in love with when we were looking at the site together was still up for sale. How could I resist. So in the cart with it.

Rose pleaded with me last night for it,
Oh baby, it's very expensive.
I've got money, she wailed...teeter, wobble went the bottom lip, big sky eyes.
Baby, I just can't.
Okaay, she sighed.

Jewel Box, double knit, silk

Told V about it when he came in from church. Oh well he said, if she wants it. Picked myself up from the floor in shock, got distracted and didn't remember until just now. I love my husband, he is such a pushover for his daughters...and his wife.

Off now to make Iolo's cookies for him. Thanks V for understanding a yarn addicted wife ( and daughter)

Have a pretty, yarn filled (or what ever does it for you), colourful day.

PS Thanks Dee for permission to use images.

Given up on Seaweed, Got Cherries instead...

The Seaweed cashmere yarn, ordered on the 2nd April still has not been delivered despite a regretably sharp e-mail to the supplier who shall for the moment remain anonymous.
So, what now? MUST KNIT LACE...

Posh Yarn has a sale on Sunday evenings, which I normally miss as I am normally in church. Remembered that the sale started at 6, forgot, remembered at 6: 15. Alas I missed the marmalade colourway, I would have needed three skiens for Icarus and there was only one left. No good. But there was Samba - a bright cherry pink and it was in a half cashmere, half silk cobweb lace weight. Oh Glory Be! Huzzah!

Mine now my precious all mine....Dance Gollum jig (not so easy with a laptop on yer lap I can tell you)
Next step, down load pattern from American store of all places via Acrobat. Have to wait for V for this one, downloading is spooky stuff... baaad juju


Update
Just had an e mail from seaweed yarn supplier refunding money. No explanation as to the delay. But at least I have my money back and I have the Samba yarn instead.

Gollum/Smeagol Conversation

Gollum: Icarus kit and yarn still has not showed and we is feeling a bit grumpy about that precious
Smeagol: We's got the Victorian Lace Today haven't we? Let's take a look at using it instead of only drooling

Gollum: No yarn fine enough or good enough. Shame really - that spiders web shawl on page 44 looks so beautiful, we reckon we could have had a hacks at that
Smeagol: We is a spinner ain't we precious, we spins tons of stuff, we's got loads of yarn - why not use up the shetland lace weight that we has been sweating blood over for the last few spinning evenings?


Gollum: We don't really wants an ecru shawl, do we precious?
Smeagol: So we dyes the stuff! Don't get hung up on what if it goes wrong and felts into a claggy lump. So what?!

No more reasonable objections really.
So here it is from natural to pink using acid dyes that I got for silk but thought I might as well give it a whirl as I really don't want to lay out any more cash right now. It's hanging up bleeding dye all over the weeds in my garden right now

Icarus update

This is not mine alas, but it's a beautiful photo isn't it?

On a happier note I've been accepted onto the Icarus KAL. Even though I have nothing as yet to KAL with - the ol' Hip Knits is taking rather longer than I'd hoped it would to get my yarn to me. Though it has been Easter hols and I believe Kelly, the owner, is sprogging at the moment so it is to be expected that she has been sucked into the maternal undertow and hasn't surfaced yet.

Having said that, I suppose the yarn will turn up on my doorstep tomorrow in order that I feel like an utter rat and have to re write this asap. And it is nice to have something to look forward to...

Iceberg Ahead Captain

Ah, I'm warning myself now so that when, in a month or two, I am weeping and tearing my hair out I will look back at this and know that I knew that it would turn out this way.

Knitting I cannot do,
I know I can't, I'm sure I can't.
I cannot knit.

So answer me this. Why on earth do I want to try lace knitting of all things and not a scarf, OH NO! I want to do a big son of a gun Icarus shawl!

It is gorgeous admittedly and I already have my eye on some cashmere yarn for the project. But Lord God (and I am not blaspheming here 'cos only He knows what is going on in my tiny mind right now and I think even He is scratching His head) what am I thinking?

And yet I know I will try and it is largely due to two yarn stores that are tantamount to yarn/fibre porn. One look at Posh Yarn and Hip Knits and I was a goner. Woe is me, I am the Lady of Shallot, doomed I tell ye...doomed.