I’m on my trip and I finally got in a little knitting.  I continued working on the February Baby Sweater.  So far, I’ve managed to finish about four inches of the body before running out of yarn.  It’s not a complete crisis; there is more yarn back home, so I’ll be able to finish the sweater.  No photos of the sweater today because the hotel lighting is terrible.

No progress has been made on any other project.  I’m just not feeling any inspiration.  It’s funny, because on this trip I’ve had so many yarn opportunities.  There has been yarn at farmer’s markets, and I’ve driven by several yarn stores (just stumbling on them), but nothing seems to help.

Little progress is being made in my house on knitting projects.  The sock that I’m working on has been sitting in a bag, untouched, for about two weeks now.  My other project, the baby sweater, just gets neglected.

I have managed to finish both sleeves on the sweater.  I decided to knit them in the round to eliminate additional finishing steps on this project.  In order to knit them in the round, I had to put the rest of the sweater on waste yarn (the blue seen in the photo below) because I have only the one size US4 needle. 

I’m hoping to have some knitting time over the next week that will allow me to finish the baby sweater, and possibly cast on for an additional project.  I’m headed out on a trip, and with the airport wait times and flights, I think that the baby sweater should be done before I return.  As proof of my insane confidence, I leave you with this.  I dug through the stash and found this.  It is now in a nice, center-pull ball on my table, waiting to be packed in luggage.  I’m thinking a Nancy Bush Knitting on the Road pattern might be appropriate for this trip.  I guess we’ll all just have to wait and see.

Recently, I’ve been swearing off yarn purchases due to my stash guilt.  There is my post on not going to Stitches Midwest, and I didn’t go to Wisconsin Sheep & Wool for the first time since I started knitting.  This week, I was weak.

I had the opportunity to be in the western suburbs this week with some free time on my hands.  I sat in Panera knitting and having some coffee, when it occurred to me that the next town over had a yarn store.  It wasn’t one I’d been to, but I’d seen them at Stitches before.  Since I hadn’t planned ahead, I pulled out the handy new GPS, went to the shopping tab and entered “F-R-I-N-G-E”.  I guessed that the GPS unit might not know about yarn stores, but the results of my search listed Fringe: A Knitting Salon.  (Side note - knowing the GPS knows yarn stores is a scary and enabling idea)  Since the store was just about 8 miles away, I decided that it would be worth the trip.

It was about 10am, which seemed reasonable as a yarn store opening time, so I hopped in the car and drove to the store.  As I arrived at the parking lot, there was a large sign that said “Yarn” in the window of one of the stores.  The GPS had found the right place.  The door to the store was open, so I went on in.

It’s a nice small shop.  As I walked in the door, there was a bench full of worsted hand-dyed merino, always a nice greeting.  The store had to arranging methods.  Lots of yarn was organized by color, but the baby yarn, lace, and sock yarns all had their own area not mixed with the rest of the colors.  The same was true for the Encore and the Brown sheep yarns (and maybe the Malabrigo?).  I was a little confused by the yarn organization. Being the bargain hunter that I am, I was immediately drawn to the big table in the middle of the room labeled “Sale - Buy 1 get 1 of equal or lesser value free”.  Buy one get one free yarn?  Whee!!!

There was quite a mix of yarn on the sale table, but I was drawn to the handpainted yarns.  The interesting thing about the handpainted yarn was that most of it was unlabeled, nothing to indicate yardage, yarn weight, or price.  Those yarns that did have tags were from Pink Cottage Yarns - Exclusive Hand-Dyed yarn from Fringe.  Now, I happen to know that the owners of Fringe are also the creative force behind Dream in Color yarns.  In fact, they run the Dream in Color dye studio/shipping area out of the back of Fringe.  Could this Pink Cottage Yarn actually be either the predecessor to or test samples for Dream in Color?  I can’t find any proof on the web, but the yardages are the same, and a few of the colors on the table looked very similar to a few I saw on the Dream in Color website.  What’s a knitter to do when presented with this kind of a deal?

I bought yarn.

What did I get?  There were two skeins of a beautiful chartreuse green worsted weight, but I couldn’t justify only purchasing 500 yards.  I didn’t have my list of patterns and yardage with me, but I didn’t think that 500 yards would make me anything substantial, so I left it on the table.   Then, I found some sock yarn on the table.  Sock yarn at buy one get one?  Two 100 gram skeins for less than twenty dollars?  I couldn’t resist; I bought sock yarn.

Both yarns are varying shades of a solid color.  I thought that it would be nice to have some yarn that would work better for some of the textured sock patterns I want to make.  Since I used my green yarn with Bayerische, I don’t have much stash in solid colors sock yarns.  I really liked the gold, it has really rich tonal colors in it.  The blue is much closer to being a solid color.

Please forgive me for my weakness.

I’m still alive, but life has gotten in the way of my knitting and blogging lately. 

Since I finished Bayerische, there has been mostly insignificant knitting.  I knit about a half dozen dishcloths with the Swish with a Twist pattern.  That has become my favorite dishcloth pattern.  It’s easy to memorize, has a bit of patterning to keep my interest, and I love how the finished items look. 

I’ve also cast on for a new sock.  It’s my own design, and for undisclosed reasons, I can’t feature it on the blog yet.  That’s the end of that topic, for now.

Jim and I were working on the house over the Labor Day weekend, and he mentioned that a friend of ours had called to let us know that his wife had their baby.  My response, “She’s not due until Sept… oh.”  In my defense, the baby did arrive about two and a half weeks early.  After some teasing about having knit for babies of other friends, I decided that I’d go ahead and knit something. 

Luckily, our friends had a little girl.  I just think that there are so many cute girly patterns for babies, and it seems like everyone I know is always having boys.  After spending some time on Ravelry, I settled on the Baby Sweater on Two Needles from Elizabeth Zimmerman’s Knitters Almanac.  This pattern is also known as the February Baby Sweater, which is how I’ll refer to it from now on.

Now comes the challenging part, yarn selection.  I wanted to knit this sweater from stash.  However, my stash tends follow the colors of my wardrobe (except for that sock yarn stash).  This means that it tends to be blacks, grays, and neutrals in mostly natural fibers that could felt.  I’m not sure about burdening the new parents with having to handwash garments, so I wanted to ensure the sweater is machine washable.  I did find this lovely Baruffa Aerobic in a dusky lavender color in my stash, but the more I looked at all the little symbols on the ball band, the more I worried that it would felt if washed. 

Back into the depths of the stash I went.  What else could I find that wasn’t wool.  Hmmm…the Jaeger Cadiz perhaps?  It’s a nice off white color, but I just can’t bring myself to use this 50% Silk yarn for a friend’s baby when I really wanted it for me (yes, I’m selfish).  I know, I’ll use the Artyarns Supermerino; it’s been sitting in the stash for some time now, since I found it in a sale bin at Ancient Pathways.  However, upon seeing the yarn, Jim declared the #101 colorway “too-boyish”. 

Then, there it was, a yarn of the right gauge that actually recommends machine wash and dry, the Phildar Leader.  The whole reason I bought this 100% acrylic yarn was because this always happens to me when I want to knit baby sweaters.  I have 3 skeins in a green, and 3 in a nice eggplant color.  I grabbed the eggplant and started swatching; when I was done, I washed and dried the swatch.  While it is a nice acrylic, it softened up even more after machine washing and drying. 

My gauge isn’t the 5 stitches to the inch called for by the pattern, but it will work.  As the pattern states, “Babies come in various sizes”, this will be a sweater for the baby to grow into.