Yarn Score - Package 2

My second Wollmeise grab bag arrived late last week -- a Kunterbunt 80/20 Twin with 5 skeins in a 80% superwash merino/20% nylon mix.  I retrieved them from the bag they arrived in one by one for the surprise of it all and was really pleased with every one.

They're all marked as "We're Different", meaning they don't live up to the colorway they were based on originally for whatever reason, but I'll list their colorway inspiration here from left to right:

• Strohblume (strawflower/immortelle) 
• Feuerwanze (Firebug, June Bug) 
• Merlot 
• Im Jahr der Ratte (“In the year of the rat”) 
• Neptun

The Im Jahr der Ratte has a bit of a blue tinge to it that's hard to see in the photo, and it might be destined for some sort of colorwork project with the Neptun because they seem to really compliment each other well. Otherwise, I don't have a set project for these little beauties yet.

I was itching to cast on with some Wollmeise to see how it knits up, but I couldn't quite decide what they were destined to be, so instead I started some overdue socks for my husband in some of the Socks That Rock - Rare Gems Mill Ends that caught his eye.

They've been great knitting therapy so far, but more on those later.

Yarn Score

Wollmeise.

Yes, I scored some of the highly prized (on Ravelry, anyway) yarn from Germany.  Last year it seemed, at least to a casual observer like me, that the shop was updated roughly once a week and often in the wee hours on Friday mornings for those of us in Eastern Daylight Time.  Totally understandable since the shop is in Germany, but I was never ambitious enough to get up around 2 a.m. before work on Friday morning and stay up for at least an hour or two for a chance at maybe, possibly snagging some yarn.

Recently, though, there have been some updates at a more reasonable EST time on Saturday mornings, and a couple of weekends ago I was actually at the computer to see one in action.  So I bought a couple of grab bags, the first of which I claimed from the Post Office yesterday afternoon - a bag with a pair of 100% Merino superwash skeins in "harmonic shades".

I feel lucky that my random skeins included such beautiful blues and jewel tones!

The other grab bag shipped the same day, but hasn't arrived yet, perhaps because it's larger.  It's advertised as "All in a tumble! Mixed colourways, not matching" and will include 5 skeins in a 80% superwash merino/20% nylon mix instead.

And yes, my yarn stash is already overflowing, so I won't be sitting with a laptop every Saturday stalking the site for updates.  This one Saturday score will give me plenty of Wollmeise yarn to sample and to test the feel of the yarn.  The colors are beautiful, but since I won't get all of these skeins knit up right away I'm resisting the urge keep trying for more just because they're hard to get... at least for now.  I really need to knit more and shop less, but there are so many beautiful skeins out there!

A Favorite Knitting Tool

I'm making steady progress on my Nonpareil sweater, but since it's knit in pieces I don't yet have much in the way of photographic evidence of that progress.

So far I've finished the back piece and am well over halfway through the left front piece and it seems relatively successful, but I am worried about the size since it's the first time I've made something like this that I couldn't try on along the way.  My fingers are still crossed as far as that's concerned, but the knitting has grabbed my attention and the yarn is nice and soft to work with so I'm making progress either way.

I have been relying heavily on one of my favorite knitting tools for this project -- a nifty calculator for increasing stitches evenly across a row.  There's probably a reason for it, but I'm still getting used to large patterns like this one that only give you directions like:

Cast on 40 stitches... purl across row, increasing 10 stitches...

that leave it up to the knitter to figure out how to make those increases work out neatly.  Since someone bright has already figured out a good formula for it, I rely on the calculator for those points in the pattern.

But now I also find myself relying on the calculator for other things as well.  This particular pattern has you knit the waistband as a separate section, then pick up stitches along the edges of the waistband to knit above and below it.  Of course, the pattern tells you how long to knit the waistband in inches and then how many stitches to pick up along it, but at least in my case that length never works out to the right number of clear points for picking up stitches along the edge.  So, I've been giving the calculator the number of possible stitches I see along the edge and the number I'll need to find somewhere to get up to the required number to pick up, and then I use the provided formula to tell me where to cheat in the extra stitches (in place of the m1 in the formula).  I think it's made the process for this sweater much, much smoother than if I'd been trying to just eyeball the pick up and knits to get to the required number along each side.  (There was a baby sweater where I picked up the stitches for a button placket at least 4 times before I got the right number of stitches that didn't seem puckered all in one spot or generally uneven, so I'm definitely familiar with doing it poorly.)

So while I'm not halfway yet, I'm getting there.  Of course I'm not sure if I bought the right amount of yarn for a sweater in this size, since I originally bought the yarn for a different pattern in the booklet, but I'll worry about that when I'm closer to the end.  The yarn is pretty new still and seems fairly popular, so I don't think it would be a problem to get more.  I also remember someone at Stitches mentioning that the patterns seemed to err quite a bit on the high side in yarn requirements for that booklet, so maybe I'll luck out with what I have.  Besides, it may never get to the sweater stage if I can't make it past all of the seaming, which is not something I've had a lot of successful practice with yet.

No More Deadlines

After months and months I finally have no more self-imposed deadlines for babies that need Christmas presents or Moms-to-be that need baby shower gifts, and no more Ravelympics deadlines or secret projects with secret deadlines.  For the moment, at least, I'm back to knitting what I want and starting random projects because I feel like it rather than because I "need" to make a gift or compete or knit-along.

I hold no ill will towards any of the projects that had deadlines (most of which I imposed on myself, after all), I'm just ready to relax the knitting a bit, so I'm trying to scale back on the mental deadlines I've been known to impose on myself.  Some people call them goals, but I find I sometimes take them too seriously to call them that and they stress me out if I don't finish "on time".  So back to lazy knitting I go, at least for a little while.

But I offer proof that this doesn't mean that I'm not getting any knitting done:

A little 8-inch sock yarn blanket square.  It was mostly mindless and fun to watch the colors mix and pool as it grew, but a bit of a challenge for me to determine when I was at the right size (I cast off too early, picked up some stitches and added the garter stitch border to make up for it.  Definitely not my finest example of knitting skill).  It also took a fair amount of knitting time given the US size 1 needles.  I can see why it's a popular way to use up the sock yarn remnants, but there won't be a ludistitcher sock yarn blanket anytime soon.

And of course there are other things in the works in various states, including my first project from yarn and patterns purchased at Stitches Midwest 2009:

I told Xandermommy I couldn't go spend more money at Stitches this year if I didn't even get around to knitting with my purchases from last year, so this is the start of a sweater.  I'm not imposing a deadline on it, but since Stitches Midwest is still months away I am hoping that I can make some decent progress on it before then.  Of course, this particular pattern requires making a lot of pieces and picking up hundreds of stitches and way too much seaming, so we'll see if I'm ripping my hair out by then anyway! 

(Yes, all of those yarn fumes at Stitches overwhelm reality and give you all sorts of ambitions and a warped sense of how many hours are in a day and how fast you can knit... or something...)

Ravelympics Finish

I did finish my second and final project for the Ravelympics and earned two more medals:

• Hat Halfpipe: All things hats and heads
• Nordic Colorwork Combined: Colorwork, intarsia, fair isle

Pattern: Beaumont Tam
Yarn: Classic Elite Yarns Fresco - Regatta and Oatmeal
Needles: US 4 / 3.5 mm and US 7 / 4.5 mm circular needles (32")
Completed:  February 26, 2010

Really not the best example of colorwork, but wearable enough for me.  I don't think my tension was horrible and my floats didn't seem too tight, but the looser stitches on such large needles did make every little variation stand out.

I blocked it over a plate as recommended, but it looks like I should let it relax a bit before I wear it - or make my peace with the mushroom head look!

Of course it's pretty rare that I wear hats anyway, but apparently it doesn't make the patterns any less appealing. I enjoyed the fair isle challenge and the practice that comes with knitting with different yarn in each hand.  But, now I'm ready to slow things down a bit.  There really is a different feel to knitting on a deadline and I'm looking forward to going back to the slow pace of switching projects occasionally to suit my mood and attention span of the moment.