A Good Yarn

Friday, September 08, 2006

Thank You!

OK, my camera seems to be working again - I'm sure it was user error. Anyway, here are the rest of the neutral, beachy goodies:



A lovely basket (I'm a sucker for baskets!) and some shells and starfish from the beach. SO COOL!!! Being a land-locked Minnesotan, I love this little bit of exotica. I'm dying for a vacation, too, so this is sort of like bringing a vacation to me. I was particularly taken with the starfish - so pretty and so cool. There's also a nice sea sponge in there.



She also included a deck of playing cards from Oregon, a lovely rose pin and a wonderful bar of spearmint soap that is 100% natural and vegan. It says that "enlivening mint essential oils can be useful in strengthening resolve during times of transition." Love it! Last night Greg, Michael and I went to a local sports bar to have dinner and watch the football game and we played some cards, so I already "Christened" them. Whenever I go on vacation, I either buy cards or a refrigerator magnet as small momento, so this truly was like vacation coming to me. Oh, that reminds me that she also sent a magnet, but I already put it up on my filing cabinet next to my desk, so no picture. Excellent package and just the right things for me - thanks again Deb!

I got another really nice package yesterday as well, but I'm going to wait to reveal that until next time.

I also started a new project. This is a kit I bought very recently and didn't even show you when I bought it. I couldn't wait to start it, so even though there are about a million things I want to knit right now, I had to cast on for this - it's a Mitred Merging Colors Scarf. I am just completely addicted to this too. It's made by knitting three strands of a fingering weight merino together - you change the combination of which three colors you knit together on a row to row basis so it really gradually changes color. It's so very, very cool and now I want to get every colorway. Since you're knitting from the outside in, you start by casting on almost 700 stitches. I've done a lot of stitch marker exchanges and have been mocked for having so many stitch markers, but they came in very handy in keeping track of how many stitches I had cast on:



That's a lot of markers, isn't it? Here's a closeup of some of them, with the very edge purple color of yarn:



As you can see, that's also a lot of stitches on the needle. I probably should have started with a longer needle and then switched to a shorter needle as I decreased. I finished that long cast on yesterday and started knitting and didn't get much done because I loved kniting it. I also stayed up way, way too late last night. I'm pretty sure I managed to avoid twisting the stitches when I joined. I'll post a picture of my progress another time.