a good yarn

unlike hearts, a good yarn these days is not hard to find.* in fact we are spoiled for choice, especially with that interwebs thing. having said that, i am not a huge fan of most locally made product, BWM and ACS leave me cold these days with their poor colour choices and reliance on harsh fibres or novelty acrylic based products (and it makes me cross to say this, because we produce the best merino in the world and we get sold shit from local mills and have to buy the good stuff back from overseas). and it is sometimes frustrating that there arent more local stores stocking the top shelf international stuff – it is sometimes nicer to be able to smoosh in person – but ive never felt deprived in that way. like i said, there’s the internet. but that has changed since i went to america.

oh my god. the yarn stores. even the not so great ones (yarn company, downtown yarns, im looking at you), were still better than most of what we have here. and cheap! lordy. it’s made me a bit cross really, given we have complete dollar parity, to see koigu priced in the $20 range ($12 at purl) and mad tosh sock in the $30s ($24 at knitty city). but what i really loved was discovering WALLS of yarn that we just dont see here. the best place for this was a little store above a greek restaurant just up from dupont circle in washington DC called looped yarn works.

it was there that i encountered my current favourite yarn, berroco ultra alpaca light.

i’ve seen the ads for berroco in the magazines, and they always seem to have nice patterns, but ive just never thought of ordering any. most of the other big names someone’s bought back from somewhere, and we’ve fondled, so its safe to order online, but i didnt know anything about berroco until i saw it. at looped, there was a whole wall of it, all sorts of different kinds of fibre blends, in the most amazing spectrum of good vibrant solid colours. i zoomed straight in on the alpaca light. its perfect for our conditions, not quite a DK but light and lofty.

smooth with a slight halo, warm without weighing a tonne. its knitting up so beautifully, i divided greenfields for the arm holes on tuesday night and got to try it on. perfect (unlike this photo).

and did i mention the price?

yes that does say $5.80 a skein. they’re not long skeins, but i bought 10 on the spot and have since ordered 4 more, which is way more than i will need for greenfield (better to be safe than sorry right?), but im still looking at a $70 cardigan. For. The. Win. so far i have used less than 3 balls, and i wound up some more last night.

see that swift? that is my current knitting pride and joy. its  from Sweden, is so easy to put up and down, is beautifully made and an absolute joy to use. it was an amazingly generous christmas gift from knitabulous (well, she says she broke my blue plastic one i lent her, but she still didnt need to replace it with this beauty. of course, im glad she did!).

its so nice to have nice knitterly things. im a bit of a top shelf girl like that. maybe for americans berroco isnt all that top shelf, but i cant recommend this particular yarn highly enough. its almost enough to make you want to go live there. almost

k xx

*feargal sharkey ear worm anyone?

a tale of two cardigans

despite appearances to the contrary (ie, it not being cold), i hear that winter approacheth. i realised the other day that my snails pace on the leaving cardigan would mean No New Cardigan come the the cooler weather. dont get me wrong, i love Leaving. look at it, whats not to love?

gorgeous madeline tosh pashmina in the now discontinued ‘vintage frame’ colourway (mwahahah, i have seven skeins!), and a wonderfully detailed and elegant pattern. its going to be a very classy piece, if it ever gets finished. the issue is two fold. firstly, that wonderfully detailed and elegant pattern requires looking at the chart for every row. there are no rest rows. there are 32 rows in that pattern repeat, and they are all different. i can follow along to a point, but i still need to look. secondly, im alternating three balls at once (due to colour variations).

this does not make for transportable knitting. its stay at home knitting. its also not mindless knitting. so, its slow. i have been trying to be something like project monogamous, that is, knitting one thing for at least a few days at a time in order to make some kind of dent in each thing (thats monogamous, isnt it?!), and i had wanted to finish this cardigan before i moved onto the next one, which i knew would be in the berroco ultra alpaca light i grabbed at that fantastic looped yarn works store in DC. but it occured to me that i actually needed a black cardigan more than any other knitted object right now, and i was going to need it soon.

so i consulted the brains trust, and then ignored everyones suggestions, and cast on this:

its the greenfield cardigan from new england knits. i wanted a top down raglan but ive done lily twice and thats enough. and i wanted one with good sizing and shaping, and something that was a little bit pretty. greenfield seemed to fit the bill. i was a bit worried about garter stitch, i normally use stocking stitch for garments to keep the bulk down, but the alpaca light is only a sport weight, and is going to have lots of stretch in it which will make it block pretty flat anyway, so the garter stitch seemed safe. i also modified the neck line to reduce the fall-off-the-shoulder risk.

it feels great to be knitting a black top down raglan again. i think im just going to have to make a new one every year! on that note, could it just hurry up and be winter already?

kxx