Ingenius!!!

I've discovered an ingenious way to deal with variegated yarns, like the Manos Silk Blend that I managed to snag at The Purple Purl after a Knitty Yarn Roundtable Night last month.



The ingenious pattern? Topographie from Knitty! Essentially, you pick in the yarn which colours will be main colour(s) and which will be contrasting. You then knit in stockinette in the round, but whenever you get to a contrasting colour, you purl! Fantastic!



I'm one-evening's-worth-of-knitting into a hat, and loving this process. I should have enough to knit a hat and a neckwarmer, but because I'm using 4.0mm needles instead of the recommended 4.5mm, I may need a little more yarn -- and I'd rather have a hat than a neckwarmer with all the scarves I have around here!

Christmas Prezzie #2 just started

I'm doing a super-snuggly-soft hat for my Dad out of this luscious yarn:


It's Sulka, by Mirasol Yarns. A 60% merino, 20% alpaca, 20% silk blend. It is a gorgeous black, with tiny shots of brown and blue throughout. Enough to keep my interest while knitting, but not enough to read as anything other than black for my conservative Dad.

And when you buy Mirasol yarns, a portion of the purchase price goes back to Peru. You can read about it at their website. I'm going to include one of the yarn tags with the hat, so my Dad gets the story too.

So... the hat has gone through many pattern ideas in my head.

Idea #1) Striped black and grey hat -- Actually, this is what my Dad requested, originally. I asked him (in Heathrow Airport) if he'd actually like a hat I knit him, and he asked for a soft cashmere black and grey hat - you know, with stripes. I don't think he actually wants stripes, he just thought of the two colours together. So I've vetoed this one as I know what the yarn is like.

Idea #2) Beautiful, manly cables on an all-black hat -- This was my brilliant idea, and thankfully I talked to Jennifer at The Purple Purl about it because she mentioned cables won't show up on black, and I should do grey instead for them to show. As you can see, I aborted the cable plan and went with black.

Idea #3) K5, P1 rib with stockinette every other row -- A fantastic idea from Jennifer, but I decided I wanted a real 'ribby' look at the bottom edge. This will be a hat I knit out of a thinner-weight yarn ... probably for me.

Idea #4) K2, P2 rib at the bottom "ear" edge, stockinette to the top -- The final pattern! This is what I'm knitting, and I'm using the hat/head proportions from The Yarn Harlot's Knitting Rules. Seriously, this book has saved me more times than I can count. I'm knitting a hat with a 23" circumference, and knitting for 7.5-8.5" before the decreases. I think I can handle that.



And yes, all I've done is cast on. But it's sooooooo smooshy already!

Scrumdiddliumptious!

I paid a first (and looooong overdue) trip to my LYS, The Purple Purl, this afternoon. (What!?! I've only been in the neighbourhood for 11 months, cut me some slack!)

Wow.

They have an astounding assortment of incredible yarns. I would deem them all suitable for the YarnSnob within me . . . all except maybe for the sequined bamboo-something, but we'll pretend I didn't see that.

I discovered some lovely finds today, and thought you should know about them. My first thought for each of them was, "why don't I know about this?" so I thought I should give a Public Service Announcement:

1) Mission Falls 136 Merino Superwash - ravelry link

This seems to be a perfect all-purpose merino. It's a DK weight, and at about $7 per 136 yard ball, I could see this becoming a house yarn. It is soft and scrumptious, and I want to knit everything with it. They also have a heavier-weight non-merino that is very soft, but this was perfection in my eyes.

The colour range is also extensive, and most of the colours the LYS had in stock would have blended beautifully together.

I will definitely pick some of this up for baby stuff in the future.

2) Malabrigo Silky Merino - ravelry link

Um, yum. I want to bathe in this. Daily.

This is a DK weight. If it had been laceweight I would have bought extensive amounts. Probably the entire stock.

Most of the colourways were solids/semisolids, but there was one plum/yellow variegated skein that nearly made its way into my purse. To die for.

3) Mirasol Miski and Mirasol Sulka - ravelry links here and here

Both worsteds, both super soft. So soft that they could be a hat for my Dad, and that's saying a lot. The Miski is 100% baby llama (and yes, you can feel it), while the Sulka is a wool/silk/alpaca blend.

The colourways are gorgeous - there is even a black yarn that has so much subtlety it wouldn't be a bore to knit with.

Yup. Go. Pet.

Spend money, I promise it will be worth it.