Monday, March 19, 2007

Gorgeous yarn!

I fell off the single knitting project with a bang! I really tried to be resolute and stick with the briefcase until I was finished. But the boredom factor hit so hard...I was unable to resist the lure of a new project.

Florence in Belgium had spun up some lovely laceweight Gotland for Spin Me a Treasure. It isn't a smooth yarn, it has slubs throughout. The original lamb fleece was very silver, with black bits, which was too cold looking for me. So earlier last week I dyed it and some lovely angora/wool, handspun by Helle in Denmark, a bronze gold color. Perfect! And I kept trying to be true to the briefcase. The first picture is of Florence's yarn, the second is Helle's. Really, the second picture is closer to the true color of both, although the first shows the differences in tone. They are both GORGEOUS!

Finally, I'd had enough of the briefcase. The body is finished, I'm working on the divider between the front and the back. This is just acres of stockinette. Unfortunately, as I was working along, I started mentally detailing what I had left to knit. THAT was a mistake. Rest of divider, at least 2 pockets, key holders (I want several, as I keep different keys on different rings, why take them all off if I can just take off one!) strap (which I haven't decided quite how to do yet)... And the listing was too much.

I pulled out the Gotland and wound it into a ball. It broke 3 times, so I know there are places where the spinning is a bit fine. I'll have to watch and not block too aggressively.
I was too lazy to design something myself, so started looking for patterns. http://www.knittingpatterncentral.com/ was down, so I had to look elsewhere. I looked at http://www.knitty.com/ archives. Hm, the "Tie One On" had possibilities. Since the yarn is lighter than the options given, I'd still have to play with the pattern. For this yarn, I don't want to do dropped stitches (piquant style) because the slubs will hang up. It also needs a fairly simple pattern, to compliment the yarn, instead of trying to work against it. Okay, I'm doing the pink version (tangy) only with the number of stitches in the piquant. No, I didn't do a gauge swatch, although I really know better. I just wanted to GET STARTED! Sigh It is looking good so far, I'm doing it on largish needles for the yarn size. Here you get a sense of the color playing in the piece. I like it, don't you?! Once the camera and computer play nicely, I promise to take a better picture!

The camera and the new laptop are still not speaking. So, in desperation I downloaded them to the old computer, and then e-mailed them via gmail to myself. sigh What a nuisance!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Beautiful yarn! I love the color!