NatureWool, may in fact be my new favorite yarn for the following reasons: it has great yardage, it’s moderately priced, for a “plain old” wool (read: not merino, or other specialty fiber). The dying is superb. The color selection is pretty good. It felts nice, and wears well. Just so you know.
I have a couple of sweaters still in progress. I have some seaming to do on my Starmore Faeroe sweater, but I did some blocking with a steam iron, and it looks better now, which is really cool. It snowed here for the first time, and I think that I want to wear this sweater a lot this week because it’s damn amazing and it’s warm and the wool is really nice to the touch (shame it pills so much). The steaming helped with the pilling though, it looks like. I was talking to my favorite not-so-local-yarn store owner, and she said, that for the best results, one should really wind cone yarn in to skeins, and wash the yarn to set the twist, because makers don’t do that for cone yarn. Something to keep under advisement.
I also have sleeves to finish on my Norge Fantasia sweater, which is nice but I can tell now that there’s no way it’s going to end up like I was hoping, so I think I’m just going to make the sleeves simple and plain because I’m not enjoying the knitting, and I don’t want it to drag on more than it has to, because I’ll enjoy other projects more.
In the mean time, I got sucked into the Hat Vortex. I made 2 berets using that pattern that I posted (sorry for the roughness of the pattern. Felting cures all imperfections, so it doesn’t really matter, but I’ll clean it up at some point.) I also made a stocking cap that’s 1x1 ribbed throughout, and I really like the effect, and it’s certainly something I plan on doing again, because it turned out so well. It also gave me the opportunity to do the decreases freestyle, which turned out pretty well, and made the decreases almost decretive, if you know what to look for.
I have a fairly busy week this week, until wednesday. After that it’s easy as pie. I really want to make progress on the Norge Fantasia sleeves, (I’ve also decided that I need to redo the cast off on the collar, but thats quick and can probably be done during Lost or Veronica Mars on Wednesday.) During the aforeeluded trip to the not-so-local-yarn store, I got yarn for a couple of projects (woot thanksgiving day sales, and amazingly awesome yarn store owners and good friends who enable fiber compulsions.) Anyway… I’ll post more about what’s coming down the pike as I think about it.
Also, in TA: Knitting News, I think we’re going have some pretty intense changes before the end of the year. TA:K might splinter off, or we might get new contributor(s), or we might become a more distinctly separate site (but remain functionally where we are). Stay Tuned.
Cheers, Sam