Colour Cards

Colour cards are great!  Not just for accurate colour but for getting to feel the yarn.  I think most of the yarn I buy is from my LYS (local yarn store), so I'm also a big fan of spending way too long wandering around in there enjoying the eye-candy and feeling yarn.  But I also like to buy yarn on-line on occasion, and the colours on screen don't always match the actual yarn colour -- how could they?  A few Knit Picks colour cards just arrived and I'm planning to collect more.




This week my sample card from the UK (Garthenor Organic Pure Wool) also arrived!  There is a great thread on Ravelry about how we should be more aware of the importance of supporting diversity of sheep.  Merino yarn is so popular right now, I love it too, but other breeds are at risk.  Some breeders are dedicated to the survival of rare breeds.  Garthenor Organic Pure Wool is just one of these.  The have a great page with photos and descriptions of the different sheep they breed.  I'm definitely going to buy some of their yarn soon.


The samples come in a little booklet with about 80 different yarns.

More photos of Mom's scarf

Mom's scarf is done!

Soaked it in SOAK and squeezed it in a towel. It's blocking now. It started to dry amazingly fast. It looks great so far!

At first I put the blocking pins at the edge of the sides, like I would do for a triangular shawl, but that pulled too much and I didn't want a scalloped edge, so they are at the inside edge of the border, right where the lace starts, that seems to work well.  Except at the corners, where they are right at the tip to create a good 90 degree corner.

Nancy Pygora-Merino Lace Scarf

I've been working on this scarf for a while.  It's for Mom, I think she'll like it.  The pattern is from "Luxury Yarn One-Skein Wonders: 101 Small Indulgences", but this isn't a one-skein scarf -- which might be because I'm not using the Pygora-Merino yarn.  I'm using Knit Picks Palette in the colour currant.  It's a very nice yarn, perfect for this scarf.

In an earlier edition of this book there was an error in the chart for this pattern, and there are corrected charts available.  They must have corrected it in the edition of the book that I have.

The pattern involves a 36 row repeat, each RS row is different so it requires some attention!  Discovering an error usually occurs 2 rows later (after completing the row with the error, plus the WS purl row, plus part of the next RS row where I run into something that is clearly not right).  On one occasion I didn't notice until 4 rows later and for that one I removed the needles and ripped back to the beginning of the error row, then carefully pulled out that row, catching the stitches one at a time, putting me back at the end of the previous WS purl row

One skein of the Palette completed 8 repeats.  I'm aiming for 12 repeats, and I'm working on the 11th one, so I'm almost done!  The scarf has a nice moss stitch border.  Can't wait to see what it looks like after blocking!

Mwaa starts a blog

I love Ravelry! It's so helpful to be able to see other knitters' projects and photos, and I enjoy keeping my own projects pages up to date. It's a great way to keep notes about projects (I also keep notes with OneNote). Sometimes I want to include more information and annotated photos about things I'm learning -- it's helpful to be able to look back on the process -- so I've been thinking about a blog to keep track.
We'll see how it goes!

Just playing around for a bit, learning how to include images and such... I've learned that I can create blog posts and back date them, so I can include notes I've made about projects already finished -- cool!

 

Here's what I'm working on now, the pattern is Nancy Pygora merino lace scarf:  The photo shows just over one repeat and I've got almost 4 repeats done now.  It's a scarf for Mom, she picked the colour.

And as I edit this, at 9:30 PM (EST) on February 14, 2010:

Winter Olympics Vancouver 2010, Men's Moguls:  Alex Bilodeau has just won a gold medal for Canada!!  Wooooo Hooooo!!!