rime of the ancient middle-aged knitter

Projects Projects every where nor any a pic to show. Sorry Coleridge.

I’ve been working on a lot of pretty unbloggable stuff lately. I’ve started the Irtfa’a lace shawl for my dad’s partner Pam for their wedding – so far I’ve spent hours on it and there’s barely anything to show and what there is looks like the cat got a hold of it – such is the joy of unblocked lace knitting! I’m using white Baruffa Cashwool, the only thing I could afford/get hold of in the massive quantity required (although it’s actually quite nice yarn) – the plan is to dye it to match her dress when she knows what she’s wearing (and when the wedding is!).

My ‘take along to Knit Club’ project is the Seaweed Socks from Wendy Knits (free pattern pdf here). I’ve done one and am halfway through the second – trying to leave it for Knit Club only though!

It's more purple than this IRL - hard to capture the colour!

I’m using Dream in Color Smooshy (my favourite sock yarn ever) in Purple Paisley. It is gorgeously purple but there are other colours in there too – I wish I knew how they dyed their yarn! I’ve heard they use a technique they invented called ‘veil dyeing’ but I have no idea how that works. I feel a dyepot experimentation session coming on…

I can’t tell you about the awesome baby stuff I’m knitting. Or the fabulously gorgeous sock yarn I’ve just dyed.

I’ve started the Daybreak Shawl but as yet there’s not really enough to take a pic of! I like the shape of this shawl because it’s shallow and long rather than all pointy, like a cross between a shawl and a scarf.

The pattern includes lots of M1Ls and M1Rs and they caused me a real headache – for some reason about 50% of them created holes, but not the other 50%, and I couldn’t work out why. I frogged and started again and have just been using KFB at the edges and M1Ls (which I find much easier) fo the rest and it looks fiiine. There’s some stuff on increases here if you’re really dying to read more.

I’m using dark purple cashsoft 4 ply left over from some gloves I made my sis a while back, and some pink/green/purple variegated cherry tree hill sock yarn. So I’m destashing too!

That’s about it really! Am taking a well-deserved break from the spinning so no news there.  More pics will follow no doubt once a certain couple of upcoming birthdays are out of the way!

cor!

Oooh – my lovely spinning prize arrived from the States from moonlightbaker!

They are much, much prettier in person, and I love how each one was individually wrapped! I’ve no idea what I want them to be yet – either I’ll spin them very fine for something lacy (but I have a lot of laceweight already), or maybe ply with some very similar bamboo/merino I have to make them both go a bit further.

And I finally made it to Knit Night and picked up my handspun, £5 prize and rosette from Annie! She also treated me to a cuuute little fluffy alpaca toy and her old coffee maker which she was throwing out ’cause of her fab new kitchen. Thanks again Annie, it felt like my birthday!

I’ve called him Makka Pakka after my favourite In The Night Garden character (what? you don’t have one?).

new hove yarn shop

I went into the new yarn shop in Hove (called ‘Cocoon’) yesterday with Jan & Emma. I’d been really excited about them opening, and then had heard ominous reports about lots of acrylic and so on. It didn’t blow my socks off but I was also pleasantly surprised!

Bear in mind these are my opinions only:

Let’s get the bad stuff out of the way first:

• No sock yarn – zero zip zilch – a couple of nasty balls of Sirdar crofter stuff but nothing else, not even Regia etc let alone anything really exciting. Missing a huge trick here I think, and suspect that it indicates simply that the yarn buyer doesn’t knit socks – a bit weird as you’d think they’d have to do a bit more research than that to sustain a business!
• Yarn range generally between 4ply and aran. No laceweight or other finer yarns.
• Nowhere to sit and have a think or flick through a book or anything like that. I can understand if they don’t want to feel like they’re running a cafe or something but I think they’ve wasted space that could be used for a small seating area.
• Definitely too much acrylic generally for my liking. It feels a bit ’sponsored by Sirdar’.
• Somebody buying the yarns really likes mustard/babycrap yellow/brown.
• The only tools on offer are nasty Pony needles/hooks & no circs at all! Does anyone actually use these past their first few months of knitting?! There are much better tools out there which are just as cheap (KnitPro) or well worth the extra – Clover, Addi, Brittany etc.

And now for the good stuff:

• Nice range of Bergere de France. Even their blended yarns are quite nice and there’s enough superwash wool, wool blends and so on for non-squeaky knitting. I’d thought they were posh (essentially based on having a French name, haha, I’m a doofus) but they’re v nicely priced. eg 80% SW wool/20% alpaca blend, 120m ball, £2.89.
• Manos Silk blend – nomnomnom.
• Noro sock (silk blend version) and Lite (and I think they were just restocking Silk Blend as we left).
• They stock Debbie Bliss but not as a dominant yarn – think this shows promise, like they realise most people can’t afford more than the odd scarf in it.
• Good to be able to get general haberdashery in the same shop – some nice buttons and other bits and bobs.
• Friendly staff – though had to stifle a giggle at the lady explaining to Jan the Noro Queen & knitting/crochet expert that Noro was a Japanese yarn. There was no way she could have known.  I’m a bad person.

I’ll definitely be back, there’s enough to keep me returning, just not enough to inspire any great loyalty at the moment. Fabric Land’s closer to me for all the haberdashery, and with a bigger range, but I do like being able to go and squidge yarns in person, and their prices seem to compare well with online yarn shops. Besides, things may change – they have only just opened after all, and I know they’ve got room upstairs which I haven’t seen where they’re planning on teaching classes, having a Knit n Natter, etc so will be interesting to see what they do with that. Fingers crossed!