Sunday, January 13, 2008

Sales are dangerous!

So, Lettuce Knit is re-doing their floors this coming week, so this weekend they decided to have a store-wide sale in order to minimize the amount of yarn they'd have to move in and out of the store. Of course I had to take advantage of this. Here's the list:
1 Tulip kit
4 skeins Malabrigo worsted (for another Clapotis)
2 skeins of home-made cotton tape (for a lace wrap skirt)
5 skeins each of two different colorways of Silk Garden (for an Entrelac shawl)
1 skein of Dream in Colour Smooshy (for toe-up toe socks)
2 balls of dishcloth cotton (for dishcloths)
1 skein of Ultra Alpaca (for wrist warmers)

Yup. It was a very productive shopping trip. Photos of pretty much everything are on my Ravelry account in the stash section. Photos of everything would seriously have made this post really picture heavy.

I also finished off my Koolhaas hat today.
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The suggestion from the lovely Adrienne to try cable needle-less cables was a life-saver. I still had to use the cable needle for some of them because the physics of doing cables that are both knit and purl don't really work with that technique (and I could be completely wrong about this, but when I tried it a few different ways, I got weird stitch wrapping action happening). I had a little bit of trouble with the decreases owing to the fact that I read the pattern incorrectly. Thankfully, I put in a lifeline after I finished all the lattice repeats, so after 2 rounds of decreasing when I realized my problem, I didn't have much to rip back in order to get where I needed to be. In the end, I only needed 3 lattice repeats using the Malabrigo in order to get the hat to fit my head.
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I absolutely love how warm and squishy this hat is. I haven't blocked it or anything, and I have a feeling that I probably won't bother. It looks fine as is, and I just want to wear it already!

I have quite a bit of yarn left over too, and I think I could probably even get another one of these hats out of it. I might leave it for now, and then make another one when I feel the need for some more or less instant knitting gratification.




2 comments:

Adrienne said...

I'll say sales are dangerous! That's quite the amazing haul! Love all that Silk Garden!

(I'll admit that I've been doing some yarn acquisition lately as well, NOT necessarily sale yarn =P)

Great Koolhaas hat! I really need to make one of those. I probably wouldn't bother to block it,either. =)

I'm glad that needle-less cabling worked out for you. I've done a ton of knit/purl cables without a cable needle (my crazy aran sweater, as well as Shedir, as well as another hat that I just finished that I will post about soon), you can just leave the yarn in the back while doing the cable crosses and then just knit and purl as usual afterwards. At least, I haven't noticed any weird stitch wrapping in all this time, maybe I should go back and inspect just in case. =P

Karen said...

The more I think about it, you're right about the cables thing. I was just getting confused, and didn't really feel like thinking too hard about it at the time. Guess I'll just have to make another one just to wrap my own brain around it! (haha!)