Tuesday, October 02, 2007

Holiday knitting

There are around two and half weeks ahead in Italy. With quite a time for chatting and sitting and knitting. But, no bulky stuff.
I was thinking (yes, I can do that) about it. Lots of knitting - if I can make a sweater in a few days, then it has to be something like two sweaters. Or rather five - lots of sitting and chatting. And lazying on the beach. And all sorts of stuff that leave the hands free.
I decided that tiny gauges do the job. Tiny yarn and tiny gauge. I was messing around with the stash anyway and I discovered several things: I'm running of handpainted yarns.
I fell for odd Noro way too much so that I have plenty of yarn but no handpaints. And many of the yarns are hard to combine. As you might have noticed, I'm into colourwork, not complicated laces and cables and whatever else the knitting world offers. I like idiotic knitting in lovely yarns which I prefer to dye myself and should I get the blends Noro has, I would love to dye those to my lovely colours.*
I have hardly any tiny yarns for tiny gauge but I have 2.25 and2.5 circulars.
I had 400g of the camel coloured yarn, which is a blend of wool and camel hair, then 300g of the handpainted angora and I noticed long ago that they match in an unbelievable way. They even were in the same bag. I made the first part of the wee sample and it missed something. Contrast. I fished out some more handpainted angora and now the query comes: is the blue and grey (there's almost no white on the yarn but there are a few scarlet blobs every now and then and I find the yarn totally stunning) okay or is it too contrasting? The yellow stripe on the needle is alpaca. Since I guessed that deeper, richer colours will be better, I fished it out from under the bed and I'll dye it, I'll add some greens and reds and who knows whats, I'll only keep the camel yarn in solid colour.
I have a new pattern for that sweater, too. It will be a variation of my usual cut with wide sleeves and boatneck... but with a totally new element. Just you wait.
The next thing will be this and this, nobody is buying it anyway. Good enough for tiny gauge as well, maybe I'll make it to a dress or something like that and if I am ironical, then it'll be Morning glory from the front and Freesia from behind.
Leave the comments on my yarn choice in comments, thanks.