Purple Points Cardigan

I have started a new cardigan. I saw the picture of the Point and Line Cardigan in Webs winter catalog and instantly fell in love. It looked so simple, yet somehow intriguing, so I went for it.

I bought eight skeins of Elsbeth Lavold's Silky Wool XL in the purple colorway and got started the beginning of January.


I am anxious about finishing my first ever cardigan, and I think I have picked a relatively easy pattern as my second go around.

Beads

I received my package from Shipwreck Beads yesterday!

In an effort to use up yarn in my ever-increasing stash, I have been searching for projects that aid my quest. I pulled out this yarn, of which I have two skeins left,

and found this pattern: TNT Beaded Scarf.

Fell in love with it on the spot, and istantly started a search for beads, which led me to Shipwreck Beads. I picked out these beads.

I am quite pleased with how they look with the yarn:


Unfortunately, I got ready to checkout only to discover that the website requires a $25 minimum purchase. Major negative, in my opinion.

Wearily, I went back to Ravelry to search for yet another beaded scarf pattern that would require the usage of some of my stash yarn. I found this pattern: Sea Glass

and ended up finding three different colored beads to go with some fingering weight yarn I had in my stash.

Another unfortunately, this pattern isn't available yet, it is still in test mode. So, I found the Dué Amori Gloves and Scarf set instead. I liked this much better, so now I have to figure out how to incorporate three different colored beads into everything. Oh well, you win some, you lose some. At least, I am using up some of my stash yarn.

Shalom - Finished!

I finally finished my Shalom cardi. (I'm not pregnant...just happens to be the way the sweater fell....) But I love it! I will definitely wear this a lot during the winter. Makes me want to knit as many of these type sweaters as I can. It was a very satisfying knit.

Bambino Taffy by Be Sweet

Yarn:
Bambino Taffy by Be Sweet
70% Organically Grown Cotton
30% Bamboo
1 Ball = 100 yards














Yarn Review:
This is a self-striping, textured, slightly thick and thin yarn. The texture of this yarn has a very nice rough/earthy look to it. The feel of the yarn is very soft. It feels like a broken in t-shirt. Wonderful! This is the first yarn with cotton in it that I have actually enjoyed working with. Although, to be fair, I haven't worked with many cotton yarns aside from Sugar N Cream, which is not one of my favorite yarns. The mixture of fibers also adds to the textured look of this yarn. The cotton is the soft, dull side, and the bamboo gives an extra kick with a little bit of sheen. If you are looking for a worsted weight yarn for a simple project this yarn is it. It has all the pizazz to make a simple project come to life.

Down side to this yarn: the producers created the self-striping effect by basically knotting five different colored yarns together.













I am not so crazy about that. I tried pulling two of the knots apart, and they held together very well. However, there is just something that I cannot get past mentally. It just seems to cheapen the yarn somehow.

Even with that one negative, I would still recommend this yarn, and I still really like this yarn.

Baby Blanket

This is a blanket I whipped out for my little nephew (yet to be named). This pattern is called Wool Leaves by Jared Flood aka Brooklyn Tweed. It was super easy to knit & the pattern was easy to memorize.

Pants on Fire Longies/Hat set

Finally a FO! This set I finished earlier this week. I loved the yarn. It was so soft. I definitely would love to knit with this yarn again. It was so lovely.

This set was made with Punta Yarns hand painted Merisoft. The set is going into my Etsy Store.

Mermaid Feet

I started a new pair of socks this past weekend! I saw the yarn in Erin's LYS and thought it would be perfect for the Pomatomus sock pattern. The colors of the yarn are what I always imagine an iridescent mermaid's tail to look like.

The yarn is Malabrigo Sock in color #416 - Indiecita. I'm knitting these socks on size 0 DPNs. I had hoped to knit these two at a time, switching out my DPNs from one sock to another, but my dearest daughter broke one of my needles AFTER pulling all the needles out of my sock. I didn't want to have to try to reinsert them without losing stitches, but the idea of losing seven rows of ribbing was sickening. I'm now down to five in my set, so that makes knitting these two at a time impossible. Oh well.

I can already tell these socks are going to take me forever to knit. The twisted ribbing would take me a while without any other complications. However, on top of that, I am having to keep my tension really tight in order to achieve a smaller gauge than what is called for. I'm hoping that will help these socks turn out a bit smaller than what is called for. 72 stitch socks tend to be a bit big on me.