Friday, April 30, 2010

Yay Stitches South!

See the awesomely beautiful yarn I got at Stitches?? I was so excited to learn about Stitches South in Atlanta, since my recent knitting podcast obsession had made me super jealous of people going to festivals full of fiber such as Stitches West, Oregon Flock and Fiber, etc. When I discovered one in the south and not too far from me, super pumped!

And I was able to combine the trip with a visit and shopping since it was in Atlanta and my niece (oh and my sister too I guess) lives there and ATL has my fav store, H&M. I didn't take any classes since they are a bit pricey and I was unable to convince my only crafty friend to go with me but really the thing I was most excited about anyway was the yarn market because I never have a chance to look at and fondle real awesome yarns such as my fav podcasters talk about constantly. I work therefore never manage to get to the couple of small LYSs that are in my area. I don't want to order things from the Internet that I have never felt or seen so I was really hoping to see some of the fab yarn I hear others use, such as Malabrigo Sock, Cascade 220, Socks That Rock, and Dream In Color Smooshy - as well as seeing other cool random yarns from small independent companies. I really didn't see as much familiar stuff as I had hoped but the independent stuff did not disappoint!

I ended up with a lot of Malabrigo Sock, well with a lot of sock, period. In fact I only got one laceweight skein and the rest was sock yarn. You see where my focus is. I fell in love with the Malabrigo sock, as expected - I already love the worsted. And the colorway are just to dye for! I really wanted so much more... I got natural, Rayon Vert and Archangel. So yummy.


Also got some Lorna's Laces Shepard Sock Stripe in Flamingo Stripe


and Socks That Rock medium in Deck the Halls, all from the Webs booth.

With those all in my arms, a lady commented it was obvious what colors I liked, and that my choices even matched my clothes!

I proceeded to not break the color palatte and bought some Ivy Brambles Romantica Merino Lace in Petunias, 1000 yards, so gorgeous!





And then found the Sanguine Gryphon booth with the medeival dressed staff and delicious colorways. I got Bugga! in Nightcrawler


and Little Traveller in Costa Rica.
I wanted so much more and everyone took credit cards so even though that was the end of my cash.... I totally would have carried on digging a huge yarny hole for myself except it was 12 o'clock, time for me to leave because I was going to babysit my niece while my sister got her hair cut. Oh well. It's for the best.

Now up, time to knit socks and shawls!!

Saturday, April 10, 2010

Cool join technique

I heard about this joining technique on a podcast, I think it was DoubleKnit and think it's very cool but I'm not sure how functional it will be for some patterns. It's a technique to stop the uneven stripe problem when you are working in the round. The way it turns out, you have to move the join one stitch to the left every time you go around and so it will affect the spots where you would otherwise be decreasing or other things. I wanted to use it for a little knit baby jumper but don't think I'll be able to. Maybe for something else.
 
It's called Meg Swansen's jogless join or jogless jog.
http://jlyarnworks.blogspot.com/2009/02/tutorial-jogless-join_22.html


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