No, I didn’t go swimming. You’ll understand soon enough.
I worked (vaguely) on the sweater today, at the office. I only got a few rows done, because it was fairly busy, but I am now at the point where I separate sleeves from body. Woohoo! However it still looks no different, so no photo of that today.
At knitting group (which was just as fun as last week! I love this group) I managed to forget to bring a. waste yarn to put the sleeve stitches on and b. another skein of the olive as my current ball is almost gone, so I worked on the other project I’d put in my knitting bag. I don’t think I’ve shown this one here before.
This will eventually be the Treillage Socks (sorry, pattern is on Ravelry only) by Anita Peluso, knit in STR Lightweight, colorway Lapis. I LOVES it. It is also what I meant about pooling. As is fairly plain, the colors in this yarn are pooling in what I consider to be an absolutely fascinating and beautiful way. Other knitters would HATE the effect and spend countless hours ripping and reknitting, trying different needle sizes and stitch counts and even patterns until finally throwing the yarn into the toilet in disgust. STR has a very strong tendency to pool. For me, quite honestly, that’s part of the draw. I love how you never know how it’s going to pool, or what it’s going to do next. But some people completely avoid this (excellent, luscious, beautiful) yarn entirely due to this fact.
Incidentally, this yarn was given to me as a Christmas gift by some friends of mine, and upon receiving it I couldn’t help but notice that it matches exactly the colors of my engagement ring (now part of my wedding set). The stone is not a diamond (can’t stand diamonds)- it’s a mystic topaz. Mystic topaz is a normal topaz stone that has been “painted” with some sort of ion that causes the color to sort of break apart into a myriad of blues, purples, greens, and sometimes even red, all depending on how you look at it. I adore this stone, so of course I adore this yarn, and the pattern I chose based on the shape of my engagement stone. This is why I’ve been calling these my “mystic” socks.
They’re also, if you happened to notice, my first magic loop socks. I’ve used magic loop for hats before, and I think it’s a great technique. I still loves my DPNs, but magic loop is very handy- particularly for things like hats, where the circumference changes and you’d otherwise need a circ and dpns, and for projects you take with you, where dropping a dpn is a real concern (I’ve done it before). It does take some getting used to, and tinking is a bit more fiddly… plus these hiyahiya needles aren’t as sharp as my beloved knitpicks. Still, I think I like magic loop well enough to do it again, for sure.
