A Little Bit of Mirth Never Hurts

Yarn comes in, yarn goes out (of the shop), and some yarn ends up on my needles, for personal stuff, for gifts, and shop models. There's a great pattern in the current issue of KNITTER'S magazine for a felted handbag that I thought was really cute


so I thought I would make it. We have a great self-striping yarn from Knit One Crochet Too called Paintbox. It's 100% wool and has nice, long color repeats. It makes nice garments and it felts quite well. So I figured why not......

Sometimes things go a little haywire in the washing machine. I can't explain it, and a good friend of ours out in Oregon (HI MARE! I wish you still blogged, but I fully understand your leaving....) always referred to the "felting pixies" that lived in her machine. When things go awry, there's no real explanation--I always say that felting is alchemy, not science. Every now and then the finished result doesn't match expectations. Enter my bag project, as described above.


I tossed it in the water and it got HUGE immediately (the garter stitch fabric opened up when the yarn relaxed in the hot water...and the holes along the decrease points were MONSTROUS). I shrank and shrank and shrank and shrank and the finished piece was an oddly-shaped little monster. It dried overnight and I made Matt angry (in a good way) when I was playing around with the finished fabric instead of listening to him....and when we got to the shop, I pinned the handles in strategic places and got into the piece....thusly


And if you're having fun with wearables, you might as well strike a pose, no? Might as well work it.

In better news, there's new Colinette in the shop (as promised). Here's the beauty shot, after stickering and all laid out on the couch in the back of the shop (near the fire place)


That's our first influx of their new yarn Parisienne (scroll down the page to find the links for each individual garment in the book, including garment sizing and yarn requirements). And along the left side is the full color palette for the yarn. Here's what arrived yesterday in the yarn of the same name
I'm in total lust with this stuff.....it knits around worsted gauge, there's 240ish yards in a hank, and it's just $13 a skein. FOR COLINETTE! That's darned reasonable!

Also in this shipment....a little bit of their other new yarn for fall called Tao.


Tao is 100% cultivated silk, knitting around the DK weight (5.5 sts/inch on about a US 6/4mm needle). I've worked with the yarn earlier this summer (late spring, technically) and I'm in total love with it, too. It's a little bit of an extravagance at $26.50 a hank, but it's beautiful stuff.

I'll show you the cap-sleeved raglan that I knitted in Tao as well as my progress on my Parisienne sweater tomorrow. Pictures to follow, I promise! And should you need any of the above-mentioned goodies, just gimme a holler and we'll hook you up!