And the winners are…

Happy Halloween!  Many thanks to everyone who came to check out the new digs.  🙂

The random number generator just spit out 32, 24, 5, and 26.

So, the winners of the yarny prizes are as follows:

1 skein of Mountain Colors Mountain Goat in the Mountain Twilight colorway – Hanna 

2 skeins of Himalayan Yarn Tibet Wool/Recycled silk in a pretty green color – Gladys

2 skeins of Shibui Knits Sock in Sky – taelixev 

1 skein of Socks that Rock lightweight in Korppi – Adrienne

Yay!

Now that I’ve handed out yarn, it’s time to get ready to hand out candy!

A new yarn love

Friday evening I hit Purlescence Yarns for Late Night Knits.  A large group of us sat around knitting and watching Bell, Book, and Candle.  There were cupcakes because Purlescence was celebrating their second birthday.  There was also a small yarn sale — Rowan yarns were 25% off for a few hours.  Normally, I would say that I don’t need any new yarn, but there was one Rowan yarn I was interested in — the new British breeds line.  Knitter’s Review had done a review of it recently, and it sounds quite nice.  I’m always interested in trying different breeds of sheep and thought it kind of cool that Rowan had decided to focus on a few specific British breeds.

I was completely sold when I plucked a ball of the BFL off the shelf.  Not only was it nice and soft, but it smelled slightly of sheep. I bought one ball thinking to make a quick hat (it’s a bulky yarn, with the label stating 13 sts = 10 cm). When I got home, I wound it into a ball by hand because it just felt so nice. Then, I started scanning Ravelry for a pattern. I settled on Gretel. I played around with a gauge swatch going through size 7, 8, 9 and 10 needles. The pattern calls for 4.5 sts/inch in stockinette stitch and 4 sts/in in k2p2 rib. I got about 4.5 sts/inch with the 10s, but I’m waffling on that because the patterns seems to be for a 24″ hat. I have a smallish head (21″), and don’t want the hat to come out too big. I’m thinking I’ll knit it on 9s, which, of course, means I have to buy a new set of needles because I don’t have any 16″ long 9s. *sigh* I don’t care though because it’s going to be a beautiful hat to wear.

Housewarming

Welcome to my new home! In celebration, I’m hosting a little housewarming party.

I’ve been working on getting my blog up and running here at my own domain, and while things are still not entirely finished, they are tidy enough to invite people over. Don’t be surprised if you see changes over the coming weeks.

Meanwhile, please update your RSS feeds:
http://zardra.dimmet.net/?feed=rss2
http://zardra.dimmet.net/?feed=atom

As thanks for checking out my new home, I’m giving away a few prizes — one prize for each year I’ve been blogging at Knitting from Outer Space.

1 skein of Mountain Colors Mountain Goat in the Mountain Twilight colorway

2 skeins of Himalayan Yarn Tibet Wool/Recycled silk in a pretty green color

2 skeins of Shibui Knits Sock in Sky

1 skein of Socks that Rock lightweight in Korppi

All you have to do is leave a comment in this post. You have until 5 pm PDT on Oct 31, 2008, about 2 weeks. I’ll announce winners that night. 🙂

 
ETA:  Feel free to spread the word… unless you don’t want any possible competition. 🙂

The Horizon

Now that the Sister Shawl has been completed, wrapped, unwrapped, and worn, it is time to look to the horizon and see what’s next…

Not much actually… I dreamt about knitting the shawl for 2 nights after I finished it. I did take Le Bete Noir down to Monterey with me and have gotten most of the armseye shaping done on the back. A worsted weight yarn is a big difference from a lace weight one…. I think my fingers were grateful for the larger soft wool. Of course, now I’m itching to make something for myself, so a pair of socks might be in order. My sister got me a gift certificate to Knitting by the Sea in Carmel, and I pick up some lovely superwash merino yarn… I got the Glacier Lakes color, although I was tempted to get the Tilting the Gizmo color because it was such a bright green color, which was odd cause I’m not a big fan of green in general. I’ll probably have to do toe-up socks since each skein is only 123 yards, but a nice soft pair of kick-around socks would be nice.

Pictures, pictures everywhere

I finally finished my lace bookmark for the Knitted Lace bookmark exchange. I blocked it last night, and it should be going out in the mail today. I used the diagonal lace pattern from Barbara Walker’s 1st treasury.


This was my first time adding beads to my knitting. It was an interesting experiment… trying to figure out which side of the stitch a bead had to be on to get it to show the way I wanted. I think it might be fun to try this pattern again, but putting the beads in the design… so they follow the diagonal.


The Sister Shawl is progressing and looks to be done in about a week… well, at least the main body of the shawl. Then, I need to do the lace border. I’m on row 96 and can currently get about 4 rows done in 2 hours. I plan on working on it tonight, trying to get to at least row 100. Then, I have a whole bunch of free time this weekend during which I hope to get at least one repeat section (16 rows) done.


I was very happy to come home last night and find not one, but two packages waiting for me. One package was from Inspirations Yarn containing my Surprise Sock Kit. I chose the warm colorway, which got me a really pretty coppery brown yarn.


The other package was from an eBay purchase I made… a pretty purplely and silvery superwash roving. I’m thinking socks… I like socks.

Wandering off the path

I have refrained from purchasing anything what so ever from my LYS because “I have a shawl to knit.” I have to say this out load whenever I pick up some soft, tasty looking yarn in the store… like that alpaca/silk slightly thick and thin that would make a nice shawl for myself… or a throw…. um, yeah. But, on Saturday, I could not let pass up getting some Bouton D’or Ksar in black… 15 balls, in fact… at half off cause the shop owner was sick and tired of looking at dangling ends (the balls fall apart really easily). So, $180 of gorgeous 50% wool, 50% camel yarn became mine for $90 (I’m very proud of myself if you can’t tell). I found myself casting on a swatch at around midnight… have to see how it knits up, right? Once I had a swatch I found myself wondering what I could knit with it… 15 balls should be enough for a sweater… although black isn’t exactly the best color for me… makes me look more than a bit pale. I could, however, knit a sweater for my husband, who does look good in black.

Due to some confusion on the yarn tag… it says the gauge is 17 sts/4 inches on US size 10.5 or 5 mm… I swatched with both my size 10s and my size 8s. For both I got 4 sts to the inch with the fabric created on the 8s a bit tighter… I thought the 10s made it too holey looking.

I am now about 4 inches into Le Bete Noir (as it had been christened)… and am wondering if I am still knitting at the gauge I swatched at. If I just measure the guage as the kntting sits on the needles I get 5 sts/inch, which would make this 5 inches shorter in width than it should be. If I try to make the knitting looking like it might when not bunched up on knitting needles I get 4 sts/in… 4.5 sts/in.

Le Bete Noir is beginning to look like a very appropriate name…