TV wasteland = fun with alpaca

How can there be ABSOLUTELY NOTHING worth watching on a Saturday night on any of the bazillion channels we get? DVD player and a hank of alpaca yarn to the rescue!

The yarn is a sport-weight alpaca from Thistledown Alpacas that I bought last year at Maryland Sheep & Wool. Lovely, just lovely, about 120 yards of softness. There's a lot of texture in there. The pattern is the New New Shale Cowl, only mine is about 5 inches shorter than the pattern instructions call for because 1) I only wanted to use one skein, and 2) I thought a full-length one might be a little heavy in this yarn. This is Alabama, after all. It's not heavily blocked; I just steamed it some to get teh YOs to open up a little.

I have two more hanks of this yarn, and I'm thinking maybe fingerless mitts, or maybe a hat...

Crawling back into the light

A bout of the winter blues has been an unwelcome visitor over the last few weeks, but despite not getting it together to post anything, I haven't been entirely unproductive. Happily, the re-purposing of the Portland Tweed from the unfortunate hooded scarf into a sweater was in my humble opinion entirely successful:

TAH-DAH! Something I will actually wear (and already have)!

Pattern: Climbing Vines Pullover (Interweave Knits, Winter 2008)
Yarn: Portland Tweed by Classic Elite (bought at Sheep To Shawl in Montevallo)
Needles: US7s for the body, US6s for the ribbing
Modifications:

• Worked body in the round until the armholes,
• Simplified the armhole shaping,
• Picked up the sleeves at the shoulder and worked in the round to the cuff,
• Added a small gusset in the armpit (I HATE sweaters that bind),
• Made the neckline a little higher and the overall length a little longer

Santa Claus also had something on back order for me, which finally arrived. At last year's Maryland Sheep & Wool, I bought two hanks of Delly's Delights Twist of Heaven Alpaca DK, all they had left. I had no specific plan for it, but I couldn't leave without it. The name is perfect; it is unbelievably soft and lush, possibly the softest alpaca yarn I've found so far. And the color! A strand of chocolaty brown and one of a soft gunmetal grey (there's an oxymoron for you!) This close-up kinda captures it.

Anyway, at some point I decided that two hanks weren't enough, and two more arrived last week. Yards and yards of the most perfect alpaca yarn ever! And because I think it's so perfect, I'm utterly intimidated picking out just the right project for it. I mean, how can I even contemplate sullying something so wonderful with a mediocre project? So the search goes on for just the right thing...

Fiber dry spell

A combination of a wicked stomach flu and spring fever - mostly the flu - has severely limited my enthusiasm for yarn, or much of anything for that matter. I'll omit most of the scary details of the stomach virus, other than that I think I caught it from a dear old friend's one year old and that it knocked the hell out of me for longer than expected. (Could this little sweetie be the face of a germ carrier?!!?) Egg deserves kudos for being a kind, supportive husband during the first night and day of drama and the subsequent five days of whiny exhaustion.

The main current WIP is a shop model for the LYS, but progress is slow. Despite there being an abundance of stockinette stitch in it, my concentration just hasn't been sufficient for working on it for any length of time. I have started on the miles of i-cord handles (yawn) for the soon-to-be-felted entrelac bag; again, progress is slow. That one I really need to light a fire under, because the bag is supposed to go to Maryland Sheep and Wool with "T" and me in May. Come to think of it, if this fiber ennui keeps up, I will not have to worry about busting the budget there - good for Egg, bad for me.

Maybe a little informal knitting meet-up will get me back in the mood....