Thursday, June 28, 2007

Round and round and round she goes . . .

Somehow, I find myself knitting in the round again. I still haven't picked up cotton yarn for Mom's sleeveless top because I want to try out the new KnitPicks Cotlin, and it's not available until July 11. I also did some more careful reading on the Tank Girl pattern; the pattern calls for 8 balls of Goa heavy worsted/bulky cotton/microfiber yarn (that's a lot of slashes), and at $7/ball, that's just a bit too pricey for me. Obviously, I could work on finding an alternate yarn, but I'm not so good with the substitutes yet, and for summer, I'd like to try something a little lighter anyway. So, I think I'll be trying this All Season Shell I found on the Lion Brand site. It's done in Lion Brand Microspun but I think, expert that I am, it will work nicely with the CotLin (they're both a "3," for what that's worth!), which, incidentally, is a much more reasonable $2.50/ball.
Anyway, the point of all that blathering is that, while I wait for CotLin to become available, I've started a pair of arm warmers that, should they turn out nicely, will be a Christmas gift for my sister. And they are knit in the round. Again. I think I'm getting pretty good at it. I'm using the KnitPicks Wool of the Andes in "Hush." This is my first project using pure wool instead of a cheapy blend like Wool-Ease! I like it so far, the wool feels much softer and seems a lot more durable.
My sister, who I think will appreciate the arm warmers' ability to stylishly (and by "stylishly," I mean, "more nicely than Band-Aids") cover up her arm tattoos at work, recently moved to Ellicott City, which is one of the places I would like to live if I weren't about to start a job in Washington, DC (I live in Columbia, which is slightly further south than EC, but still means I spend about 3 hours a day commuting). There is apparently this very cute yarn shop called The Celtic Knot right near her apartment that I'm eager to check out. I can't decide if I'll be using visiting her as an excuse to visit the yarn shop, or vice versa . . .

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