Misti Alpaca feels like Heaven January 11, 2009

Yesterday while perusing the yarn at Prairie Yarns, I caresed my first skein of Misti Alpaca chunky yarn.  Holy cow, it is soooo unbelievable soft and I wanted to curl up with it and cuddle.  I now really want to buy some and make a super soft sweater with it and I absolutely would wear it all the time.  Luckily I noticed all of this lushness after I paid for my yarn and was having my yarn wrapped into balls.  At the last second I caught some lovely skeins of Misti Alpaca sock yarn out of the corner of my eye and wandered over for just a second.  Wow, I just know that my next month’s project will be to acquire some Misti Alpaca yarn and knit myself up some socks.

For this month I have three projects in mind.  Since my yarn from KnitPicks hasn’t arrived yet (it may come within the next couple of days), I will c/o with the yarn I bought yesterday!  I bought some eco-friendly yarn in a heathered gray/brown color and in straight up cream.  Prairie Yarn was nice enough to order me one more skein of the gray/brown and will ship it to my house when it comes in!  The outline for my project is first to knit up a purse alternating the two colors and as far as decoration, I want to do 2 different cable patterns on both the front and back.  I think I would love to do the Flirtation cable (from Vogueknitting.com) in the middle and then a 6st crossover cable on either side of the Flirtation cable.  I’m really excited to get to work on it!

I picked the gray/brown color because I really liked the combination of it alternating with the cream color.  I am also very fond of putting together something classic that will last; the colors aren’t too crazy and it will go with a variety of things.  The heathered gray/brown color also reminds me of tweed 🙂

Today I plan on getting to work on that and we’ll see how far I get before my second skein arrives!

I am so peeved June 17, 2008

I started working on something finally.  It’s taken me a week or two to knit through some swatches (of which only 1 survived) and I discovered one that works well and looks cool.  I was using US 8 needles and a baby blue colored yarn to knit this pattern and I intended to make it a blanket.  On Saturday I casted on 120 stitches and went to work.  By tonight I had completed the first 16 rows (it took me forever because I pretended I was 21 again over the weekend and didn’t do much else besides eat a lot and tend to a hangover) and managed to take a few pictures to prove my triumph.  Good thing I did that because as I worked the next 3 rows, I notice that somehow things had gotten flip flopped.  Instead of my stitches continuing in the same pattern, they were now reversed.

This happened to me time and time again as I knitted the brown purse for a girlfriend.  So I’m not really surprised, just really annoyed.  But I knew that I could carefully rip out my stitches and save my project.  Carefully I pulled out 3 rows and began to slip my needle through the orphaned stitches.  12 stitches in I completely botched it and lost countless stitches that I am honestly in no mood to hunt for.

I do intend to try again.  Except this next time I will use smaller needles and try very hard to keep my tension the same.  This happens to me with cable knit, that each row of cables is uniquely different and you can’t always see the pattern as clearly.  I’m hoping that using smaller needles will help.

I know, looks nothing like the picture from Lion Brand Yarn, right?  *sigh*  Some days I really want to give up knitting because I feel like I’m absolutely no good at it.  But then that feisty part of me that refuses to be dragged down and declared a failure (by myself) jumps right back up again and ferociously attacks a new project with my pointy sticks.  Still doesn’t change the fact that half the time my creations look nothing like the picture, but I always just feel relieved I finished something that doesn’t look like a cat barfed it up.