Sunday, November 22, 2009

My latest indulgences

Ron and I just spent five days in Halifax and I've got all kinds of new goodies I'm anxious to show off!

This beautiful stuff I got at The Loop on Barrington:


The fleece is a romney/lincoln cross and comes from the happy flock of my friend Pia Skaarer-Nielsen, who dyes the wool herself. I bought 100g of my favourite colour in the morning and went back to buy the rest that afternoon but someone had beat me to it. I just discovered this afternoon at our Unspun Heroes gathering that "someone" just happened to be my friend Kimberly who had also traveled to Halifax last week. So I guess if I'm desperate for another 100gs of this lovely fleece I can go camp on her doorstep and refuse to leave until she sells it to me.

That's actually all the fibre I got while in Halifax. I was trying to be good, you see. I did get a 47" Addi Turbo circular needle and, following these most excellent instructions, manage to cast on a pair of socks 2-at-a-time using the magic loop method, but for those I used yarn I already had. (Yes, I packed a ridiculous amount of knitting yarn, all my knitting needles and my warped Knitter's Loom. No, I didn't use any of it, except for those two balls of sock yarn.)

On the way home, though, we took a detour and went to Sun Mercantile in Tatamagouche where I succumbed to the wiles of these two skeins of yarn:





At $30/skein, that top one was a total indulgence. I saw it as soon as I walked up to the yarn display and fondled it lovingly but then put it down 'cause it was so pricey. And I looked at a couple other things, then fondled that one again. Then looked at some other stuff, when I spied some other gorgeous stuff... and discovered it was the same skein of yarn that I'd put down in the wrong place. This happened at least half a dozen times, me falling in love at first sight over and over again with the same skein of yarn, until I finally just put the thing in my basket. A 60% superwash wool, 25% mohair, 15% nylon blend, it is absolutely gorgeous. It came with a Mountain Colours sock pattern of my choice included in the price, so I've convinced myself that it was money well spent.

The second one is a fingering weight 50% alpaca, 30% merino, 10% silk, 10% nylon sock yarn by Misti Alpaca. I've been eyeballing the Misti Alpaca lace weight for ages and ordered a couple skeins of the chunky weight that my yarn supplier sells, but I hadn't seen the fingering weight for socks before. This particular colourway really spoke to me, so into the basket it went as well.

Either one of these may wind up as socks, but I've also been really anxious to knit myself some fingerless gloves. I'm really hoping to win this contest on JL Yarnworks' blog and get the pattern for these babies...


...'cause I'm hankering to knit some cables and I really like fingerless glove patterns with a proper thumb hole rather than just a slit in the side. I did buy myself a really cute pair of handknit fingerless gloves done in Fleece Artist yarn at the craft market weekend before last but they're quite bulky and I like the more delicate look of these. Am thinking I might try to 2-at-a-time ML them as well to make sure they're the same size.1

In spite of the fact that I was expecting 8 lbs of combed top in the mail and had just bought 100g of Pia's lovely fleece, I was also seduced by this beautiful roving that was hand dyed by Janine, who works at Sun Mercantile:


My justification for this is that it's a merino/silk blend and none of the top I'd ordered had any silk in it. Merino, yes - I'd ordered 2 lbs of that. Merino/bamboo and merino/tencel, yes - had ordered a pound of each of those, too. But merino/silk? None whatsoever. It only seemed right that I get some to compare to the others. *cough*

I got a couple other goodies from Sun Merc, including a hand knit hat that is SO CUTE I've barely taken it off since I bought it.2 I also got a bunch of books at various bookstores that I'm excited about, including Sock Innovation by Cookie A, The Handweaver's Pattern Directory by Anne Dixon, and Spin Control by Amy King.

Of course, I got home on Friday night and discovered the parcel pick-up slip for the 8 lbs of combed top I'd ordered from Fat Cat Knits waiting for me on the table. I picked that up the next morning so now I'm drowning in amazingly beautiful fibre for spinning, but that's a story for a whole separate post.


1. True Confessions: It drives me nuts when a pair of socks or gloves don't fit exactly the same way - I find it really distracting and uncomfortable. Can you say OCD?

2. Srsly, I've hardly taken it off. I have, however, put it carefully on the bedside table at night rather than sleeping in it. There are limits.

3 comments:

Gloria Patre said...

I founf your site through fiber arts webring and I love perusing your pics! It's such a boost during the drab winter! Hope you'll continue to blog as I enjoy reading your posts! Nice to have met you!

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Alison said...

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Details are at http://yarninmypocket.typepad.com/yarn_in_my_pocket/2010/01/6-sunshine-on-a-rainy-day.html