Anyway, I thought I’d show you the goodies I picked up at the fibre tasting at fibre space on Friday.  I went with a plan in mind – Laura Chau at Cosmicpluto Knits released her Honeybee Cardigan pattern recently, and after seeing Jesh’s, well, yeah.  It was on my “to-do” list for sure.  So, I was planning to look for something to use for that.  I also ended up picking up some of the Imperial Stock Ranch yarn that we were playing with at the event, and one of their patterns.

Yeah.  Orange and more orange.  (I’d better watch out, or I know of two people in PA who will come steal it from my stash!)

The top yarn is the Spud and Chloe yarn I mentioned the other day – it’s their Fine yarn (80-20 superwash wool/silk sock yarn) in “Clementine”.  I think it will work beautifully for the cardigan.

At least, it will when the additional two skeins arrive in my mail.  It helps immensely to check the yardage on the skeins and do the math CORRECTLY when figuring how much you’ll need.  (D’oh!)  Thank goodness for awesome stores who will help you out when you are a nitwit. 

The fiery ball of orange fuzz is Imperial Stock Ranch Bulky 2-Strand.  It’s a pencil roving (for my non-knitters, that’s unspun wool), and that color is “Spiced Poppy”.  I couldn’t resist it!

It’s going to be a Honeycomb Scarf (heh… Honeybee Cardi, Honeycomb Scarf… another pattern there!  Didn’t even think about it.), which is one of the designs that ISR publishes.  It’s a neat technique – i-cord linked to itself to  form the pattern and then felted.  They had one in the shop, and it was just beautiful.  I may want to stab my eyes out knitting that much i-cord, but I’m hopeful.

I started (finally) Tempest last week, after having the yarn in my stash for a year and a half.  I bought it at Maryland Sheep and Wool in 2008, right after the pattern was released.  I even wound it and took it with me to SeaSocks, figuring I might get it started.  Yeah, not so much. 

I’m moving fairly quickly through the back.  I’ve almost finished the small stripe section.

The yarn is Brooks Farm Ellie – a lovely thick-and-thin wool-silk blend.  It’s great to work with, and I really love the texture it’s giving me.   (This shot is a little glow-y.  The colors are accurate in the other picture)

Isn’t it pretty?  The striping is a little subtle, but I think it will read well once the sweater is done.  It should be good backstage knitting, which is perfect, since we got the set mostly built yesterday, and we had our first on-stage rehearsal last night.  Only 11 days until we open!!!

When I got the email on the 10th of September that the Snapdragon Tam was up, I knew it would be mine.  I hadn’t entirely planned on it being mine quite so soon, but my original plan for a next project (the Clasica Coat from IK Fall) hit a small snag, so I went stash-diving and came up with some Alchemy Synchronicity in “Foxglove”.

After a few days (and some rehearsal knitting time), I had this:

It’s SO cute!  And look at the patterning:

Ysolda does some really beautiful work, doesn’t she?  The best part is that it LOOKS really complex, but it’s really quite a simple pattern, mostly because it is so clearly written.

I made the largest size, and I probably could have done a smaller one.  What I may do once the weather (eventually) cools off is add some elastic thread to the ribbing just to snug it up a smidgen.  Or not, we’ll see. 

Oh, and for my dear smartass friends, we didn’t EAT the yarn.  We SWATCHED the yarn.  We ate the cheeses.  Silly, silly people.    (And no, it’s not an accident that “smartass” links to that option of the three of you… )

Today, it’s my Milkweed Shawl.  I’ve been seeing this all over the place, and I just loved the combination of the garter stitch and simple lace, so I knew it would be mine.  The pattern is really well-written, and was very easy.

I picked up this yarn (Spud and Chloe Sweater in “Toast”) on my first trip to fibre space, fully planning to make Milkweed with it.  It’s a lovely soft cotton-superwash wool blend, and was very nice to work with.  It’s also a worsted weight, and as the pattern calls for fingering weight, I was obviously going to change that.  My thought was that if it worked in fingering to give a shawlette, the worsted would size it up enough to make it a full-sized shawl.

Ta da!  Success!

It’s soft and squishy, and since it’s a neutral color I think it will come in quite handy this fall to grab when I don’t need a full-on jacket, or as an option when I want a scarf this winter.

Oh, I picked up some more S&C yarn last night at fibre space (Amanda and I went down for a yarn and cheese tasting event – it was great!), which I’ll have to show you later.

Pre-blocking, laid out on the kitchen table.  Already big.

Taking a little bath. Sadly, this will be the last time I soak anything in this salad spinner. I’ve been using it for 4 years to soak my knits and handspun, and it developed a crack across the bottom. It leaks. Looks like I need to pick up a new one.

A little dye bleed from the yarn. Wasn’t expecting it, because I didn’t get any on my hands working with it, but it rinsed out quickly.

Pinned out on the guest bed.  It just barely fit on the queen sized mattress.  Think I can convince Kris that we need to get ourselves a king sized bed so I have more blocking space? 

Unpinned.  Yeah, it’s bigger than my wingspan.  It’s more than 6 feet across the top edge, possibly 7 feet or slightly over.  (No, I haven’t measured.  I’m lazy.)

I’m pretty damn happy with it.  Can you tell? 

Pattern: Icarus by Miriam Felton from Interweave Knits Summer 2006.
Yarn: Ellen’s Half Pint Baby Alpaca and Silk (80/20). I bought two skeins at Stitches East in October 2007 for this pattern. Unfortunately, when I got home, I double checked, and I didn’t have enough yardage. Luckily, I saw Ellen at Rhinebeck the next week and lamented my mistake. She still had another skein of the yarn in the same dye lot. Yay for small independent dyers! It’s lovely stuff – I really enjoyed knitting with it.
Mods: Since I had the third skein, I now had a fair chunk more yardage than needed, so I added two repeats of chart 1 before beginning the lace at the edge.  That took it from a nice big shawl to a HUUUUUGE one, which makes me so happy.

I started Icarus on July 4.  It wouldn’t normally have taken me two months to finish it, but I took a few weeks to work on a sample for a friend, which I (obviously) couldn’t blog about.  It’s a neat pattern, though, so I’ll be sure to mention it when she publishes it.  Overall, I really liked knitting this shawl, although I whined from time to time about how boring the center section was.  It actually got to be pretty good mindless knitting, and I worked on it quite a bit during rehearsals.

Now, on to the next project – it’s the Milkweed shawl in Spud and Chloe Sweater in “Toast” I’ve seen a few examples of the shawl around, and I decided it would be nice to have something solid and neutral.  How unlike me, I know, but I like to shake it up every so often. (Oh, and yes, those are Ravelry links.  Apologies to any non-knitters who were curious about them.) I started it yesterday, and those of you who follow me on Twitter or Facebook know that I made some decent progress before goofing up and having to rip back everything I knit at last night’s rehearsal. Happily, while ripping all of my new Beatles cd’s today, I caught back up and have now progressed beyond where I had been.

I did pick up a couple of things (duh):

Three skeins of Spud and Chloe Sweater in “Toast”, which called to me from the shelf and said it wanted to be a Milkweed Shawl (which I’ve been drooling over on Skyline Chilly of late – she’s made two), two braids of merino-bamboo top from Miss Babs in “Frogbelly” (how could I resist a name like that?), and a drawstring reusable bag from Fibre Space.  They aren’t doing paper or plastic bags, so you can either grab one of these cuties for $5, or bring a bag.

If you get a chance, DEFINITELY check them out.  I did hear one of the employees mention that they are still adding more yarns to their stock, so I’m looking forward to another trip to check it out again!

Yeah, not good.    They had just gotten some DiC Smooshy, and I couldn’t resist.

The color is “In Vino Veritas” – it’s a gorgeous deep red.  It’s going to be a second Ishbel, more of a fall-winter one, because I enjoyed doing the first one so much.  And I’ll probably figure out how to enlarge it, too.

And in other news, wish me luck.  I’m auditioning for a play tonight, and another one tomorrow.  It’s been far too long since I’ve been onstage, and I’m pretty nervous.

I cast on this morning, and it’s moving quickly. I’ve decided to make it larger than the pattern calls for, because I’ve got lots of the yarn. We’ll see if I stick to that when I get to that point, though.

The yarn is 80% alpaca – 20% silk from Ellen’s Half-Pint Farm. I bought two hanks at Stitches East in 2007, planning to make Icarus, but when I got home and checked the yardage, I was juuuuuust short. Luckily, I saw her the next weekend at Rhinebeck, and she had another hank from the same batch. Yay! It’s lovely yarn – really soft with a nice halo – although it’s splitting a little bit. Nothing I can’t handle.

I just can’t decide what to do from here.  I can leave it as a VERY fine singles, but I think it’s overspun for that and will make me CRAZY, although I’ll have tons of yardage.  Alternately, I can ply the two bobbins together, and still have a nice laceweight-ish yarn.  Finally, I could chain-ply it to a three-ply, and have a fingering-ish weight.  See what you guys think:

Left to right, that’s the single, a two-ply, and a three-ply.  Obviously, it’s a pretty inexact representation, because it’s from the end of one bobbin, but it should give you an idea.  Thoughts?

Also, I need an opinion on something else.  See, I designed a shawl.  And I finished knitting it up about two weeks ago.  I don’t have pictures of it yet, but you haven’t seen it here because I’ve been debating whether I should submit it to Knitty (eek!), or self-publish it.  It got a lovely response from the girls up at Large Marge’s when I unveiled it at the book club meeting, and it even won the “True Love” prize (my very own Dread Pirate Roberts action figure.  ).  The thing that is making me hesitate about submitting (aside from lack of self-confidence) it is that it’s a pi shawl, and there was just one in the Spring issue. So, I’ll take thoughts on that as well.  I will say that if I self-publish, it’s not going to be a free pattern, just FYI.

I had no idea.

I open the box, and this is what greets me (Obviously, beware spoilers if you are in the club):

Beautifully packaged, tissue paper everywhere, and so much more than just the yarn.

Click through to Flickr if you want to see the tags of what all the goodies are.

And OMG the yarn. It’s Zen String Lotus Toes in sportweight (we had the option of sport or fingering) in (of course) “Over the Rainbow”. It’s beautiful.

The colors are just amazing. And it is SO SOFT.

I am so, SO glad that I signed up for the whole club. This is going to be awesome.