Thursday, July 24, 2003

I am still reeling from yesterday's adventures in yarn acquisition. CH and I were in Indy for Borders Knit Night and the knitting group got a phone call. Turns out one of the local shopowners had SEVENTY-FIVE BOXES of yarn from a gourmet knitter's estate spread out on the back porch of her shop, and we were invited to come over and go through the boxes. We spent two hours pawing through stuff, and then dickered on prices for whatever we'd piled up. I got over 160 balls of Really Good Stuff for $70!!! I couldn't begin to list it all, but the twenty matching balls of Filatura di Crosa Missoni (aran weight wool/mohair, with multicolored plies) were worth more than that all by themselves.

In addition, I had been to a store earlier in the day that was having a buck-a-ball sale. I got enough Noro Implessions to make a jacket for myself, and thirty balls of other stuff as well. So now I must beg to disagree with Hope about who has the Best Stash in the World...

This trip beat the heck out of my last Indy Wednesday, on which a tree had the audacity to run out in the road in front of me. Well, okay, it didn't exactly run, but it fell there. And it didn't belong there. So my car got into an argument with it. The car lost. It is in the shop now, getting a new windshield and a new air conditioner condenser coil and probably much putty and paint.

Monday, July 07, 2003

I've been chugging right along on Scamp, with front and back finished and joined at the shoulders, and the neckband on. Since I'm dreadfully impatient, I had to go ahead and put the partial garment through the washer and dryer to see if it would shrink the specified amount. It retained its original size right up until the very last few minutes in the dryer, and then lo and behold! It shrank exactly as much as it was supposed to. So now I am knitting away without fear on a sleeve.

I took a little break last week and dragged out some UFOs. First I worked on a little girl's cardigan (from a Sirdar book, but I'm using LB Cotton-Ease). All the pieces are now knit except the interminable lower edging. If I ever get the urge again to knit something with a separate sewn-on sailor collar, somebody please take my needles away and jam them in my eye. I did eventually get the collar sewn onto the garment, and the collar edging half sewn onto the collar, before I stuffed it away again.