An Indulgence

I want more yarn. I really really want more yarn. In fact, I am willing to buy a whole sweater's worth of yarn, even though I have two sweaters on the needles, a shawl, an afghan, a pair of socks, and the hexipuffs. Oh yeah. You knew that already. It's that none of those are the sweater I really want right now. What I want is grey cotton. 

Last post I mentioned that a machine made sweater had become my favorite, and it was also falling apart. Well, I've been looking at mill ends again. I freaking love mill ends. It started with my Raindrop Cardigan. If you don't know what mill ends are, allow me to explain.

When a yarn company makes yarn they have a bunch of leftover bits that don't fit into the balls and skeins they sell. However, throwing this yarn away can mean a huge loss of money since it can be yards and yards of little bits of yarn. So what companies do is sell mill ends. They tie these leftover bits together and sell it at a discount since there's more knots and occasionally variations in the color where one bit of the dye ran out and changed the color of the yarn before they could stop the machine and put more dye in. This is, incidentally, where the term "oddball" comes from since sometimes you can get an entire ball in the dye lot that is a different color. 

So, yes, there's drawbacks to mill ends. However, there are also some pretty awesome benefits. Like that fact that you can get yarn for a quarter of the usual price. Usually this is really freaking fancy yarn. Yarn that sells for $10 and $12 a skein for $3-$4 a piece. Same yardage, same yarn, same quality. But it's mill ends. It's like a perpetual sale on yarn. 

And now that I'm saying it to myself, I'm on my way online to get more yarn!

The Great WIP Roundup!

Yeehaw! Git along little doggies! It's time for the Great Work-in-Progress Roundup! In this post, I round up all of the WIPs I'm knitting, take photos of them, and show the whole world just how short my actual attention span is. I'll post Ravelry links to the pattern and any links I can to the yarn used.

To start off the call out, we'll go with Diana's Cardigan! Knit in Debbie Bliss Amalfi. 

That's a shot of all the pieces up top. The bottom is showing that I have half of the second sleeve to knit. You know what that means, right? It means I have very little knitting left to do in the body and all I'll have to finish if I were to just get the rest of that sleeve knitted. Really, there isn't much left. 

Next up: The Dirigible Ground Crew Socks. My own pattern. Made with a discontinued, handpainted sock yarn.

I started these in December. I still have the foot and toe to knit of the second one. Apparently I got a nasty case of Second Sock Syndrome.

The Beauty in Ashes Lace Wrap. Knit from some alpaca handspun I got for my birthday last year.

This one is especially sad. It's a beautiful pattern, knit on one of my favorite pairs of knitting needles (a Christmas gift from my friend Tasha a few years ago), and did you see that ball of yarn attached to the stole? Yeah. It's the last of three balls. I'm almost done. This thing is going to block beautifully and I just keep setting it aside. 

Lochinver: The Sequel! Knit in MillaMia Naturally Soft Merino.

This deserves a bit of a back story. When I first started knitting I really didn't have much of an understanding of gauge. My second year I started knitting things that really required a working understanding of it, and I never knit a swatch! So when I started Lochinver the first time, I used inexpensive yarn that was far too thick (supposed to be sport weight, not worsted), and needles that were too big. So, if both components were too big, what do you think happened? I got a multi-room, wooly tent that fit my 200 lb, 6 foot 4 inch stepfather, that's what. Plus it pilled like crazy within about a day of finishing. 

The Aforementioned Sunburst Stole. Knit in - oh, just click the pattern link. It's from a previous blog post (that might actually be on the same front page).

Since I've already spoken at length regarding this lovely little slip of lace, you get no further description here.

Fire on the Waves. Knit in KnitPicks Swish Worsted. 

I took easily a dozen pictures of this. Inexplicably, they all came out weirdly blurry. This is the only one that looks decent. 

In my own defense, this sucker has gotten so big and unwieldily that I have to pick it up about ten times a row, and therefore do ten bicep and tricep curls a row. It's halfway finished. It's huge. I'm still mustering up the courage to do more work on it. 

Anouk. Knit in Cascade Bulky Superwash.

This is meant for a baby. I don't know any babies. I don't know why I still have it on the needles. But there it is. Ta Da!

The Beekeeper's Quilt. Knit in whatever leftovers (and some lovely mini-skeins from a raveler!) I have laying around. 

I have photographed the hexipuffs this quilt requires with my tennis shoe for size comparison. In order to make a king sized blanket, I'll need to knit literally 1000 of these. 995 to go. I'll be done in roughly... five years. Oh well. They're a good train project, at least.

And lastly... (ZOMH we're actually at the last project!)

The Raindrop Cardigan! Knit in Aslan Trends Pima Clasico mill ends. 

"Now wait just a second!" you're likely shouting at the screen, "That looks an awful lot like a finished cardigan!" you say. And you'd be right. I finished the knitting and blocked it last night. I hung it on a broom handle which was set on top of the shower curtain rod and the corner of the shower's ceramic wall. I pulled it off this morning. 

However, it isn't finished. 

It still doesn't have any buttons.

Really Didn't Think This Through

About two years ago I bought a beautiful yarn from Wolles Yarn Creations called "Sunburst." What makes all of Wolles' yarn interesting is that she makes what she calls "Color Changing Cotton" or CCC. CCC is four strands of thread that slowly transition from one color to another. She literally starts with all of the thread in one color, and then changes out one thread at a time to the next color as you knit, giving it stunning color transitions. I absolutely love everything she makes, but of all of them I've decided that the stuff I got is my favorite.

If I love this yarn so much, however, why has it taken me so long to knit it up? Because I haven't been able to figure out exactly what I want this yarn to be yet.

Then, last week, I discovered three lace patterns that worked together perfectly. And I love all of them. They fit with the yarn beautifully and they're fun to knit. This is how much I've knit so far:

See? Isn't that pretty?

Only there's one tiny problem: That section is almost into the completely yellow part. There's only four major colors, and I only have two balls of this yarn. I have no idea if I'm going to have enough. The odds are that I won't, and I'm going to wind up with a seriously truncated stole. Or, worse, have to completely rip this thing back (I have ripped this poor yarn back so many times so far) and redo it as a kerchief or, horrors, as a scarf. I really don't need another scarf. I really don't need a scarf in cotton, either. 

That or I could find a yarn that is similar in color (or even slightly darker) than the center yarn and knit that for the middle bit. I'm opting for that. What do you think?

Because really, this yarn is too beautiful to be anything else.

I'm being enabled...

My dad and stepmom are huge yarn store enablers. What I mean is, no matter how many times I may tell them "I'm over my yarn budget, and I don't need more yarn," they still encourage me to get some.

And me, being helpless in the face of tweed, cannot help but give in. I am the proud owner of 1050 yards of purple, worsted tweed. I'm making Brunello.

Of course, this is after I knit almost a foot of random, stockinette strip to make a too short poncho that I'd probably wear maybe once or twice. No, this is a much better decision. Thank goodness the Knitty First Fall Surprise came out when it did, because my gauge is perfect and I have plenty of yardage.

I think I'll cast on right away!