I’m trying to get the fall class schedule together and spent some time with Karen and Deb this past week talking about what they wanted to teach and how to schedule everything. I thought I already knew that I was going to teach a certain sweater and then fill in with some fun smaller projects yet to be decided. I teach on Sundays so my schedule is always easy. Then –
!!!!!
– Churchmouse came out with the cutest car coat design and that had to be included. It just HAD to be. So I’m re-thinking things and trying to fit both sweaters into fall, but one will spill over, I think, and that’s okay too. Anyway, I hope to have the schedule up before next weekend. Stay tuned.
I truly have been knitting away when I have the energy to think. These past couple of weeks have been all about tearing the shop apart, cleaning everything, and putting it back together. With Karen and Deb’s help, we’ve touched every skein of yarn, moved every rack, and cleaned every square inch of floor, shelf, window and wall in the front room. I went home exhausted (I’m old!) and had to spend some time staring into space with my feet up. In between, when I had the brain-power to pay attention, I finally finished Blue Whale, an interesting knit using just one beautiful skein of Smooshy with Cashmere.
You can see how lovely and airy it is:
and then you see all the subtle colors:
and then you see the texture:
It’s a very satisfying project with a lovely, wearable, useful product at the end.
The problem with cleaning out the shelves and moving everything around is that I am reminded of all the wonderful yarns that I’ve – well, not exactly forgotten, but more that they’ve been there for a while and they’re not new and they don’t send shivers up my spine anymore. When I touch them and give them some attention, they bloom in my imagination and sometimes just must be made into something new. That happened when we put Classic Elite’s Fresco into the same bin as Ella Rae’s Classic Sport. First I noticed that there were many analogous colors, meaning close to each other on the color wheel:
Then I thought about their fiber content and benefits and deficiencies. Fresco is a blend of wool, angora, and alpaca, fairly soft with an amazing and seemingly unending propensity to fuzz up. (I have an old sweater made in it that must be brushed before and after every wearing, as must everything that is worn with it!) Ella Rae Classic Sport is a Shetland-ish wool with nice heathered colors but it’s a bit rough to wear next to the skin. How would they be together? With size 8 needles, I swatched a rather dull olive color of Fresco held together with a bright green shade of Ella Rae:
There was lots of lively color in those two shades together, and the swatch after blocking was soft and smooth with just a slight halo and not too much woolly pickiness. I was encouraged and found this very nice, easy, and free cowl pattern called Oats from Tin Can Knits:
I like the marled fabric in this simple design. Go check your stashes and do a little creative combining and swatching!
Another beautiful yarn that jumped into my knitting bag while I was rearranging was Paloma, an alpaca chainette with a gauge between bulky and super-bulky. We have lovely models in it already, but it’s a favorite that has been discontinued, and I felt that I needed to use it one more time. As it happened, I unearthed a free shop pattern for a crocheted scarf at about the same time and decided that yes, I needed to crochet something and this would be a nice, quick project for Paloma. So with a size N hook and 3 skeins of a very girly color of Paloma, this is what happened:
It was fast and easy, and yielded a feminine scarf – soft, warm and very pretty.
Okay, enough, I’ve got to get to work on the schedule!!
