Be still my heart

I am in love.


With a yarn.

I adore yarn in the general sense of course, but a very specific yarn has stolen my heart.

Ok, I won't keep you in suspense. Here it is.

The Fibre Company, Road to China Light.

It's light as air, like knitting with wisps of cotton candy, only probably less sticky. And the colors . . . muted jewel tones and neutrals, I can't find a single one I think would be unflattering.

The content is 65% baby alpaca, 15% silk, 10% camel + 10% cashmere. With that amount of softness, you can imagine it's not cheap. You can see in the photo I paid $16.75/skein--not exactly a price at which I could afford to knit a RtCL sweater.

I can stomach that price for a hat or cowl, though, and that's exactly what I did:

Pattern: Cloudy Day, by Alana Dakos
Yarn: Road to China Light in Blue Tourmaline, 1.3 skeins.
Rav link

This hat is so soft, I could sleep on it. I could swaddle a newborn in it. Polish silver. Or clean my glasses. The drape is gorgeous. Fall cannot come soon enough to wear this hat. I'm seriously considering plodding around the house in it on the weekends.

(I should really start dressing better for my knitwear photo shoots)

The pattern is flawless, as Alana's patterns always are. Clear, with charts, gorgeous photography. I'm not usually a bobble fan, but this hat was calling out to me, so I decided to go for it. Honestly, I don't love the way my bobbles turned out. Some are better than others, but none have the pop that Alana's seem to. In fact, many of them seemed determined to protrude on the inside of the hat, rather than the outside, but I'm not too fussed about it, the hat is still a little fall-ish luxury.

Too bad Washington, D.C. hasn't seen a daytime high lower than 90 in the last month.

In other non-hat news, mom's surgery was yesterday, and she made it through. She'll be in intensive care for a few days, and then hopefully moved into a regular room for the remainder of her hospital stay--which could last anywhere from 1 to 3 weeks, depending on how quickly she heals. The voice prosthesis has already been inserted, so once she heals, she can start to learn to use it. Until then, no talking (which is really going to make calling to check on her difficult), and no eating, though she has a port so they can pump in her nutrition.

When I visited her room yesterday just after surgery, she frankly looked a bit like Frankenstein's monster. There are staples all around her neck that almost appear to be holding her head on, which is a bit disconcerting. Her jaw area is also swollen, making her head look more square than round. No bolts, though.

It's quite odd to watch her breathing. She has an oxygen mask, which is of course perched over the hole in her neck, rather than over her mouth (which really threw my dad for a loop at first--we all knew she would be a so-called neck-breather after surgery, but somehow, it's not quite clicking), and it fogs up as each breath exits her neck. It will certainly take some getting used to.

I haven't told mom about the great Stoma Cover Project yet, but my dad and sister both love the idea, so keep those covers coming! You can read the details here, and I'll be photographing the covers I've already received tonight to share with you all later this week!