I’ve found out that the ironing board doubles up quite nicely as a workstation for the laptop. The Cath Kidston cover works nicely as a mouse mat and I have room to spread documents all around me. Also, it means that I save time on the organising and relocating. I’ve done the Sunday night ironing and now I can settle down with the Araucania Collection 2009/2010 colour card to keep me company! The Yarn Box range of Araucania yarns will be extending for the Autumn/Winter season with Toconao (Merino), Aysen (Wool/Alpaca/Silk) and Azapa (Merino, Alpaca, Silk/Donegal) joining Ranco on the website. I’ve been flicking through “In The Mood”, one of the Araucania pattern books, and hope to be able to write a review of it this week as there are some patterns well worth considering for when the evenings start to draw in and allow some serious knitting needle time for this of us who usually knit after dark.
This week I’ve been inspired by Let’s Knit magazine (if you look carefully you’ll find a Yarn Box discount code on the adverts pages). There’s a pattern for a cute mobile ‘phone case in the August issue which I thought I could modify for my phone so I grabbed some left over Socks That Rock and a set of DPNS and ta dah! I have a made-to-fit ‘phone case which took only two evenings and required me to stitch in two ends thanks to the DPNs and a rather nifty closed cast off. Speaking of which, how many cast-off (or bind-off) techniques are there? I must research that.
On the research front, I’ve been investigating yarn names, substitution and WPI. (What is light worsted? Does US fingering yarn match UK 4ply? Do I really have to swatch???) It’s been fascinating. If you’ve ever wanted to knit a pattern but can’t get your hands on the yarn used, there is hope for finding a suitable alternative. It appears that the spinners of wonderful yarns are the experts so as I have no intention of putting down my knitting to start spinning I’ll just borrow their wisdom. I’ll share it as soon as I’ve gathered it all together.
–Nicola
P.S. Debbie Bliss Knitting Magazine Issue 2 is back in stock.
