Friday, December 03, 2004
My Stash, My Stash!
I am slowly but surely reducing the stash. Lest you forget, it has been growing steadily--see this post. My goal is to knit up the stash that is now residing in the chest in the front hallway. I'm doing well--the noro booga bag is finished, the Sura shawl is close. Take a look:*-
She looks much nicer now that she had a bath and is stretched. I think the picture distorts the one edge a bit--it really is nice and straight. Elizabeth asked about the number of skeins that Sursa used. It actually ended up taking about 5.5, more or less. I was glad that I bought one extra skein, because some of the yarn didn't match up perfectly when I was holding double. I had to remove sections and rewind the balls a number of times to get the match right. So, having some extra to play with was definately helpful.
Notice too the new Clover blocking pins?
I bought these at Elann.com. These worked so well that I will probably get another pack of them. I used all of the ones that I had for this blocking, so another pack would be right for a sweater.
While Sursa is drying I thought about my two other projects (crochet finishing... a hat that isn't very exciting....). Not feeling inspired, I dug around in the stash and decided to work on my flouncey jacket:
I just love this cute jacket, and it is now cold enough that I would like to have it ready for wear. Here's the very beginnings of the jacket:
I should be able to make good progress on this when I sit through my daugher's gymnastic class this afternoon (or her jumping class, as she has named it--no girly girl gymnastics for this kid--she would rather hang on the rings and jump over the horse than be dainty on the balance beam--good thing the class emphasizes the more active aspects of gymnastics!).
I was reading Stephanie Pearl-McPhee's yarn harlot blog the other day and was particularly taken with her discussion of Screech in Eggnog. One of my fondest trips was a mother-daughter camping trip that I took with my Mom before I met my husband. We packed up the truck and drove from New Hampshire to the ferry that takes you to Nova Scotia. From there we worked our way up through Newfoundland and Labrador. I love Canada very much (Bruce and I took a lovely 3 day horse pack trip in Alberta before my daughter was born), and my trip to Eastern Canada was amazing. Newfoundland and Labrador are culturally very interesting and the landscape is barren and wild, yet old and contained. We ate lots of the wonderful local foods--cods tongue, salted cod, bakeapple preservers, and various recipes made with Screech. In case you have no idea what Screen is (I had no idea), it is a locally made rum. Check this out for additional info: Screech. The screech parfait (ice cream sundae with screech) that we had in a little tiny restaurant in Corner Brook, Newfoundland was amazing.
This is actually leading up to some knitting content! As I was thinking about the trip (and the Yarn Harlot's ongoing mitten fascination), it dawned on me that I had bought some handknit mittens in a small shop in Newfoundland. Here they are:
They are an interesting design that I haven't seen elsewhere--the thumb and pointer finger are gusseted, the rest in a mitten. The wool makes a very pretty traditional design. Nifty, huh?
