Sunshine!

After what has felt like an eternal winter we have finally had a peek at the sun over the last few days.  Whether it's here to stay or not I don't know, but I'm feeling confident that we won't now be plunged back into the depths of winter again.  This is quite a relief as we are are off to the Cornwall coast at the end of April for a lovely family holiday.  Of course, this is England and it could quite conceivably rain for the whole week but I'm choosing to believe that it will be fine.  I will take plenty of knitting though, just in case.

By then I should have finished Sam's Dashing gloves, the first one is done and the second one shouldn't be too far behind.  Not that it really matters because I'm fairly sure he'll just put them in a drawer until next winter now.  Sigh.

This lovely weather has also put me in a bit of a spring cleaning mood, which is highly unusual for me.  Our dining room also serves double duty as my craft room and frankly it is not really doing a good job of being either.  So I'm clearing out, rearranging and formulating a plan to make it work much better.  Unfortunately I'm at the 'breaking eggs' stage of the tidying omelette and all I've done is made a HUGE mess.  I guess I know what I'll be doing with my weekend then!

Alpaca

I've been busy carding and spinning my big bag of alpaca recently.  I've still got a long way to go, but the first skein is done and I'm fairly pleased with it.  As it is my first time spinning longdraw the yarn is not entirely even although as a 3-ply this is really only noticeable in odd places.  The woollen technique also means that while this is a wonderfully squidgy yarn it is fairly hairy and might be a bit too tickly for some garments.

So, vital statistics:

Weight - 84g

Length - 54m

Fibre content - 85% alpaca 15% mohair and sparkle

WPI - 10

Obviously this is just an estimate, but when I've finished the bag I should have around 200m of lovely aran weight yarn.  All I need to do now is trawl Ravelry and get some ideas of what to make with it.  Oh and finish spinning the rest, of course!

Hobbycraft made a liar of me!

After my recent assertion that it is very difficult for me to go yarn shopping I found myself being completely proven wrong just yesterday!  My MIL called me and asked if I would like to go to Hobbycraft (big store full of craft supplies), I initially said no due to the copious amount of snot pouring out of Cassie's nose but I was persuaded that some fresh air would do her good.  As we set off I was pretty sure I would come home empty handed, most of the stuff there I can get much cheaper online and the yarn selection is pretty poor.  MIL had a voucher to spend though so I thought I could have fun helping her choose some things.  As is always the way she came home empty handed and I came home with 400g of sock yarn!

However, as this little lot cost me just over £8 I refuse to feel bad about it.  In fact I'm pretty impressed that I managed to leave it at that.  Each of the 50g balls were £1 and they normally sell for around £4.70.  Total bargain.  And as for MIL, she was a bit disappointed particularly as she liked the look of a wooden peg loom which turned out to be just for display purposes, so (providing she doesn't get one for herself in the mean time) that's her birthday present sorted this year. 

Dashing

With Morpheus sadly out of the way I found myself free to begin another project and, as luck would have it a lovely woolly package arrived today from Wool Warehouse.

It's all Drops yarn for me to try, I think the grand total for all 13 balls was around £26 so I really havent lost anything if I hate some of it.  I was pretty good I have projects in mind for almost all of it.  I'm particularly excited about using the bright blue and pink Nepal to make a really eyecatching sweater for Cassie, but it's the grey Nepal that I have cast on with first to make some gloves for my brother.

A little while back he complained that he was getting cold hands whilst working in his office and let's face it what knitter can resist that kind of provocation?  I had planned to make him some for his birthday in mid March but I really didn't have time so I popped a little IOU in with his card.  My brother is kind of awesome and really didn't mind that at all so I'm now going to make an extra effort to get them done for him as soon as I can.  Add that to the fact that it is beginning to look like the eternal winter we seem to have had this year may finally be coming to end so I'd best get him his gloves before he no longer needs them.  As today's title suggests I am using the Dashing pattern from Knitty.  I knit the original Fetchings a few years back and found them to be a nice and easy knit so I don't anticipate any problem with these ones.  I know I could certainly do with a win after my recent knitting disappointment.

Morpheus Verdict

I had to agree, after a little thought, that buying more yarn for Cassie's Morpheus was probably the most sensible course of action.  So, buy more yarn is exactly what I did.  Unfortunately none of it was for Morpheus!  Where I live buying yarn is not generally a case of going to a shop and buying it, there really is just nowhere with a good selection around here.  Instead I headed to the one website where I knew I could buy the yarn I needed and added it to my basket, but there was just nothing else I really wanted so I didn't check out.  Then I thought I'd just have a look at some other sites and ended up ordering 13 balls of various Drops yarns, none of which help me at all with the Morpheus problem.  Realistically I think I'm going to end up ripping back and actually I don't feel that sad about it.  The Cygnet yarn was really not a good fit and there was a constant niggling doubt that it might not fit when I'd finished.  It's a nice pattern though so maybe I'll give it another go before too long.

Anyway, every cloud has a silver lining and I am now eagerly awaiting the arrival of a postman weighed down with all of my lovely new yarn.

Morpheus

I've been beaving away on Cassie's Morpheus and it's finally starting to look like a garment that might have a hope of fitting her, but it's becoming abundantly clear that I'm not going to have enough yarn.  Poop.  It's probably time that I realised that she is growing like a weed and that knitting for her is going to keep needing more yarn than it used to!  So, choices time.  Do I?

1. Keep going for as long as I can and call it a cropped sweater.

2. Rip back and start again using different yarn.

3. Rip back and start again using the same yarn but with contrasting collar and cuffs

4. Give the whole thing up as a bad job, how many times do I really want to rip back the same project?

5. Buy more yarn.

Choices, choices.

Blog Week!

Yay, Blog Week is coming up soon and this year I shall be participating again!  Last year I was somewhat occupied, what with having recently given birth and all that jazz but I really enjoyed the year before so I'm really looking forward to taking part again.  If you want to know more go here and this year's topics can be found here.