It's Wollmeise!

I'm trying to get a post in but I've exercised, showered, fed the cats, put batteries in the camera, and then taken pictures (and explained to a somewhat puzzled neighbor what the heck I was doing out there on the sidewalk). And I've got that weird head buzz going which says I'm pushing it and my blood sugar is tanking big time. So here we go!

My second 2008 sock club package arrived from The Loopy Ewe today and the yarn is...WOLLMEISE! This stuff is like spun gold it's so damn hard to get...meaning I've NEVER managed to score a skein (I just finally gave up TRYING to get any). The pattern is beautiful, but is a cast on of 64 stitches which just isn't going to work for me and I don't see an elegant way to adjust this without really changing up the designer's intentions. I do NOT like to use bigger needles just to obtain a bigger size because that gives me a thinner (weaker) knit fabric and especially for socks - it just isn't going to hold up. My mother has feet though that fit perfectly in a sock with a CO of 64 so.... I'll admit to a fiber oinkiness though and I'll probably use the Wollmeise for myself. It's red. VERY red.

Also in the package was a cool little vinyl bag for carting around "stuff." This goes perfectly with the small project bag we got in the first package. Also in there is clever gadget called a stitch saver - it's a key ring with basically a mini crochet hook for grabbing those pesky stitches that have slipped out of position.

I had originally planned to show a couple works in progress tonight so here's one (since the sock club one is filling in space). This is the Kilkenny Shawl from Cheryl Oberle's Folk Shawls book. I'm making it in yarn from Black Water Abbey which is called for in the book. I'd never seen this yarn before and the BWA folks actually had a booth at the Madrona Arts festival and I fell in love with the yarn. It's from Ireland and is very..."crisp"...which means I could never wear it against my skin (itchy, itchy), but for something going over clothes, it will be very, very warm. This shawl has been a dormant project for a month because as beautiful as it is, it just gets to be a LOT of cabling after awhile. Every fourth row is something like 5,346 cable crosses (ok, not really THAT many). It's a lot though. The color btw is "Sunset." I was torn between this color and a sort of green color at the fair and every person in the booth assured me that not only should I get Sunset, but I should also get it because it's a beautiful color that hardly anyone can wear but it looked beeeyootiful against my complexion.

Yes. I am a sucker.

Well, I also was one of those 70s folks glued to my copy of Color Me Beautiful which repeatedly assured me that anything peach colored should have pride of place in my closet. And if Sunset is instead orange, then that would be a celebration of my doctorate alma mater, The University of Tennessee (whose major legacy in my life is a tendency for me to gravitate rather strangely now to orange. Lots of orange.).

And....a little closer: