Knit Knews

My Christmas wind up is under full sail but I'm managing to squeeze in the odd bit of reportable knitting activity...

• 2 Hour "visit" to Romni Wools yesterday - primarily timed to facilitate getting my Mother the 10 or 12 balls of variously coloured worsted to crochet the Blocks Coat by Kathy Merrick (in the linked photo its on the top right). I'm not sure of the actual number because that angel of a woman and mosaic colour work wizard knit designer Barbara Gregory was there and helped mom make her selections while I browsed around the store on my own! Thank you, thank you, thank you Barbara!
• My browsing yielded some lovely royal blue tweed yarn to make a cardigan designed by Nora Gaughn from VK Winter 2006. I agonized over the blue vs some red tweed yarn but in the end the mirror at the door of Romni - right by the natural daylight told me blue was the way to go. (Why don't all LYS's have mirrors by the door? - its an invaluable tool when selecting colours you plan to wear!)
• Aaaaaand I got two more balls of the Ultra Alpaca in a darker grey tone to accent the light grey I already have for a cozy Debbie Bliss pullover.
• I'm getting things ready for post Christmas knitting. Unless and until I get everything done Christmas wise I'm not going to cast on another sweater until after the 25th. That's why I haven't any pictures - I put it all very quickly away when I got home so no accidental swatching or casting on occurs!
• I did cast on last night for a bit of a head band to wear on my power walks. The cold may have held off thus far but I know it won't stay away for ever.

That's it in Sel and Poivre knit (k)news for (k)now. My lunch break over, I'm heading back out into the fray. I want the shopping done by the time My Beloved and his mountain of laundry and ironing arrives back home tomorrow night.)

As ever, thanks so much for dropping by!

He Gets an "A" for Effort

This is the street down which My Beloved went in search of the yarn shop I found on line and set him up with directions to get to. (The woman on the right reading my little packet of directions and list of possible purchases? I don't know - he did say he took a bit of an international entourage with him of people he ran into on his way through the lobby. One woman, who works for them in Australia went along despite thinking he was nuts buying yarn in Spain when we have so many sheep in Canada.

His jam packed schedule means that one brief window of opportunity to get there Monday morning will be his only kick at the can.

The yarn store is the third one down. "La Bacelana" right there in the heart of Barcelona. He says looking through the windows you can tell the store is about 2' wider than the store front. I thought Lettuce Knit here in Toronto was the smallest yarn shop in the word but its at least twice that wide!

He could only look through the window because yarn stores in Barcelona are closed on Mondays!!

Fortunately, even if they thought he was crazy, everyone who went along with him was happy for the 4k walk in the fresh air. Besides, other than My Beloved I'm sure none of them were exactly disappointed at the absence of an opportunity to buy yarn!

Maybe he actually deserves an A+ !

Thanks for dropping by!

Just Plain Fun

With My Beloved away I have hours of uninterrupted time in the evenings to focus on knitting. Over the weekend I put that time to use on starting some mittens for Darling Daughter.

How fun to be able to grab a magazine and a Knitty pattern for reference, a few balls of worsted and some graph paper, make something up and just start knitting!

DD has very petite hands so I worked this first run at the mitts over 44 stitches after decreasing from the 54 I cast on and worked for the cuff which has a very cute set of yo/k2tog eyelets all around it.

I took it off the needles to try on and I'm afraid its a bit too snug so I'm ripping back to the decrease row and redoing it to leave me with 50 stitches which will be about an inch bigger.

So, so fun! I hope your knitting is fun today too! Thanks for dropping by!