Excess

I took Friday off as a mental health day, so I had a long weekend to enjoy! And enjoy it I did. Though I was very sad to hear over my Twitter feed that Knit Happens is closing its doors, I can't deny I squealed a bit when I heard that they would begin their closing sale on Friday. Friday, which I took off! And which the SO had also conveniently taken off! He was hoping we would be able to watch meteors at an ungodly hour on Thursday night/Friday morning, but his plans were foiled by rain, leaving him free to drive me to the sale.

We arrived before the store opened. There were several other knitters hovering outside the door. We joked about circling like vultures waiting for lions to leave a carcass. We were mostly polite when the doors opened, filing in with some degree of order. Stocks for some items that I was interested in were clearly low or depleted already (curses), but I still scored pretty big.



That, my friends, is 11 balls of S. Charles Tinka and 2 balls of Filatura di Crosa Superior - otherwise known as the ingredients for Leyfi.

I nearly plotzed. The Superior was 50% off and the Tinka was 60% off and this sweater, which I thought was far outside of my financial reach (Superior retails for $25.00/ball, bringing the tab to $50 before you even add in the Tinka), is now going to be MINE. MINE MINE MINE AHAHAHAHA.

Ahem. Sorry. Of course this world is not perfect, and I now face a sizing issue. I have enough yarn, according to the guidelines, to make the 40" size, plus a ball of Tinka to spare. However, this leaves me with no ease at all in the sweater. The next size up takes one ball of Tinka more than I have, and would give me 4 inches of ease, which seems like it might be too much. Rar. Right now I am leaning towards making the 40". Knowing me it's unlikely I will get exact gauge anyway, so maybe if I'm lucky my gauge issues will give me a little extra ease (but not too much).

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I also got this:



Schaefer Andrea, 100% silk, in colorway Barbara McClintock. I don't know what this will become. I'm thinking about Waves of Grain, maybe? I feel like it should be something corn/grain related (there are not, as it turns out, all that many corn-related lace designs). I can't help it - I'm a theme person. I'm kind of regretting not signing up for Bad Cat Designs Summer Swatch Me thingy, because this totally looks like corn growing on stalks to me.

Once again, though, I'm getting ahead of myself. I have a ton of projects to worry about before I get fussed about that.

Anyway. In addition to the above-mentioned yarn, I got a Euclan sampler pack. I have tried Kookabura wash and Soak wash, and Euclan is the only one I haven't tried yet. I also snagged an Addi Turbo lace needle. I want to try one of those babies out. I love my KP interchangeable needle set, but it's true that they aren't the sturdiest. If I like the Addi lace needles I may invest in an Addi interchangeable set. However, the lace interchangeables that they've come out with have shorter tips than usual to accommodate a 16" cable. I don't want shorter tips, I find them very uncomfortable to work with, so I'm absolutely waiting until they come out with full length tips. In the meantime, I'll try the one I bought and see how I like them.

Since I was in the area, I went to check out Fibre Space, since I had never been their before. OMG. So much love. I really wish they were easier to get to/closer to my home. I walked in and they had big signs that said LACE, WORSTED, FINGERING. I thought, FINALLY, a yarn shop that understands how I shop. I went straight for the lace area, and then straight to the sock yarn. I looked over all the other yarns, too, but it was so nice to be able to immediately see all the yarn in the weight I needed/wanted.

I bought this:



And this:



The top is Fiberphile in a colorway whose name I have totally forgotten, and the one on the bottom is Dragonfly Fiber Djinni in the awesome colorway "Reluctant Dragon." I am now on a mission to find the perfect dragon-themed sock to make with it. I squealed a little when I picked up this yarn because it uses the same yarn base as my beloved Casbah.

I also had a little falling down during the week and ordered yarn from Fiber Optic, so in addition to the yarn I bought on Friday, I came home to two skeins in my mailbox.





I regret nothing. (though I must observe from the last few pictures, I seem to be going through a green period)

I ordered gift yarn from KnitPicks to get a jump on the Christmas knitting (also some birthday knitting for which I am woefully behind) and that...did not arrive. Even though it should have. I'm going to have to call the post office because I am really annoyed that my packages are not coming. My package from Twilight Knits has also not arrived, and I'm really mad about it. I contacted her and she definitely mailed it, and she is very graciously sending me another skein, which I really appreciate since I don't hold her responsible for the failings of USPS. Either someone else is getting all my yarn deliveries, or someone at the post office is hoarding it for themselves. I am not amused. I know my address has been correct on all these packages, so I don't know what's going on.

In addition to all this yarn acquisition, I did actually do some knitting. All this shopping has induced some guilt over some of my UFO's, so I pulled a bunch of them out. I finished my Summer Flies Shawl since I was close to the end - although this took a great deal more time than I expected because of the ruffle. My love of ruffles will kill me one day. I adore ruffles on the finished project. I hate that the only way to get a ruffle is to rapidly increase from a reasonable number of stitches to an insane number of stitches (or the reverse - either way, you are knitting an insane number of stitches) and then knit stockinette until you want to die.





At least it was a worsted weight yarn. Cut it a little close with the yarn requirements on that one. The picot bind off took foreeeeever. These pictures are unblocked, since it was late when I finished.

I finished a swatch for the Simone sweater from French Girl Knits (shut up. it still counts as finishing if you started the swatch more than four months ago).



I didn't get guage. I was closest on the size 8 needle, but I may have to knit another swatch with a 9 to see if I can do better. Supatight Knitta strikes again.

I pulled out my featherweight cardigan and began binding off the collar. This project needs nothing but that bind off and sleeves to be finished. Shameful.



I'm a little worried my bind off is too tight, even though I'm using a needle something like three or four sizes up. I need to decide whether to keep going or undo what I've done (again - I started out with a needle only one or two sizes up) and try again with either a larger needle or a different bind-off technique. I wish I could remember what I did for the bottom edge, as that bind off is both beautiful and appropriately stretchy.

Not pictured is Veronique from French Girl Knits, which is also on my list of "just suck it up and finish it" projects. This one needs to be seamed before I continue, and I intended to block it and then seam it, since seaming unblocked edges seemed like a recipe for madness. However my hatred for blocking and my hatred for seaming have combined to sideline this project for months, which is really too bad because I really, really like the garment in the book. Therefore, I commit to you, blog, that before I post again, I shall block and seam this piece so that I may knit on. Once seamed, it will be knit in the round until I'm satisfied with the total length of it, and then it will need sleeves.

Both of these garments are knit in fine weight yarns - Veronique in Kidsilk Haze and the Featherweight cardigan in a laceweight (knit picks gloss lace, I think) so even though there isn't much left to be done on them, finishing these still represents kind of a lot of knitting. Boring knitting. Time to get some movies from Netflix.