Once In A Blue Moon

Dear blog friends, I am busily preparing to fly away with my Fiasco to spend time with my aunts, uncles, cousins, and parents exploring all that Nashville has to offer. It'll be my first plane ride in about 4 years (and the Fiasco's first one ever!) and the first trip we've taken for longer than a weekend since we've known each other. Needless to say, even though I've never had a burning desire to visit Tennessee, I am certainly eager to get the heck away from home and all the responsibilities therein for a few days. Plus, sunny and warmer-than-here with blues clubs and live music on every corner? You certainly won't find me complaining! Although I will miss my kitties very much:

"Can't we come, too?"

I've prepared some posts to tide you all over while I'm gone and look forward to catching up with comments and the blogs I follow when I return. But this post isn't all about how I'll off gallivanting elsewhere. I have some pretty yarn to show you, too!

BFL Fingering, colorway SasSwatch

Right about the time that I was feeling whiny about all the holes I was wearing in my Merino wool socks and wishing that Blue Moon Fiber Arts would make their Socks That Rock yarn out of a longwool breed like Bluefaced Leicester (BFL is still fairly soft but far more durable than short-stapled Merino), Tina announced that she was releasing new yarns, one of which was BFL Fingering (OH the serendipity)! Clearly, I had to have some and immediately placed an order. I have not knit with this yarn yet but I simply adore it in the skein. It is soft and sleek, and beautifully shiny in that longwool way. The Fiasco strongly disagrees that it is soft, but he is a hardcore Merino and alpaca man at heart, so he's a bit of a harsh judge of larger micron wools. Speaking of breed-specific yarns...

Targhee Worsted, colorway Single Cell Dating Pool

I was super excited to see that Tina also released worsted and chunky weight versions of 100% Targhee wool yarns. Targhee is not a breed I've covered yet in my spinner's study but here's a little blurb about it from the Blue Moon website:

"I fell in love with Targhee sheep and their crazy good wool years and years ago when I had loads of spinning time. It is as much a joy to spin as it is to knit. It's so lofty that you expect it to just float away and it seriously could with the amount of elasticity it has. It might not be ultra soft like a very fine merino, but it's still soft enough, and it will wear so very well.... Our Targhee is both raised and milled domestically. Targhee is one of America's youngest breeds and is named after the National Forest where they grazed in the summer. The forest was named after the Chief of the Bannock tribe of the Northern Paiute."

I love that Targhee is an American breed and I find her description matches what I feel, the overwhelming impression I get from petting it is sproinginess and loft. I can't wait to swatch and see what it wants to be!

Since there are so many wonderful yarns available at Blue Moon Fiber Arts other than their ubiquitous Socks That Rock, I was inspired to start a Non-STR KAL on the Socks That Rawk! Ravlery board. I've had a gorgeous skein of Mopsy yarn burning a hole in my stash for over a year and a half (eek!) and I can't wait to get knitting with it. Why don't you join along? We'll be continuing the KAL from now through the summer so there's plenty of time to fit one more WIP in and I think it'll be a great way to see all the gorgeous colors Tina cooks up on different bases. Plus, there's a (very rare) sale going on right now until 9 pm on May 8th, so what excuse do you really have not to join in?

Work-In-Progress Wednesday #15

Since I've been hard at work busting out a couple of secret designs for an upcoming e-book for Afghans for Afghans, I don't have much I can show you this week. However, I have been doing a bit of knitting on my  Star Athena Mystery KAL project (look away if you don't want to be spoiled!):

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BMFA De-Vine, colorway Smokey Mountain Morn

I've missed knitting with the lovely yarn that I gushed about last week, so I'm very happy the final clue came out yesterday. I also think I found the perfect buttons for the cowl. They are somewhat misshapen silvery ones that are funky enough for the style of the cowl but plain enough to complement the crazy stitch patterns well. I bought them at Love 2 Knit (formerly known as Unwind), one of the local yarn stores that are within minutes of the new apartment I'll be moving to in a few days (which I am embarrassingly excited about, btw). While I was there, I couldn't resist picking up a little yarn, too:

These are The Fiber Company Acadia, colorways Driftwood and Blue Heron (60% Merino wool, 20% alpaca, 20% silk). I love how soft and light they are, and the silk slubs give them a fun, tweedy texture. I think they might become a colorwork cowl someday, like Gyre by Elizabeth Elliott (when I get brave enough to try real colorwork, that is).

Any fun new yarn finds for you? How about good colorwork cowl pattern recommendations? Don't forget to check out more WIPs by clicking the image below!

Work-In-Progress Wednesday #14

Is it just me, or did today feel more like Friday than Wednesday? Hello, 4-day-weekend, am I glad to see you! I'm totally not complaining. Wanna see some WIPs?

Ever More Ribbons:

Malabrigo Yarn Rios, colorway Azules

That is a terrible photo of the knitting but an adorable photo of Darwin, so I kept it. Thanks to an extra-long conference call today, I finished one of the pair of my Beribboned Wrists and started the second. These are my leave-at-work knit because they are simple and I can just knit a row here and there when I have a second without messing anything up. I anticipate having a pair of these on the needles continuously for a while, people have been chatting them up on facebook and I'm being convinced to open an Etsy shop and sell them... but probably not until after the new year. Too many deadlines!

Dragonfly Fibers Traveller, colorway Riptide

In addition to the secret knitting I 'showed' you last time, I have another secret design on the needles using yarn from Dragonfly Fibers. Kate uses similar yarn bases as The Verdant Gryphon and Cephalopod Yarns and is another Maryland-based indie dyer. I don't know what they put in the water down in Maryland but it sure makes for some talented and creative fiber artists with great color sense, and I'm grateful for it!

Mystery Cowl:
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SPOILER ALERT: If you are taking part in Star Athena's Mystery Cowl KAL and don't want to be spoiled, you should probably stop reading now. (Bye!)
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BMFA De-Vine, colorway Smokey Mountain Morn

This was a total impulse project. I saw the post about the mystery KAL, knew that I liked Star's sock design I'd recently knit, had been thinking about making myself a new cowl, and once I heard the word "discount" (10% off the yarn with purchase of the pattern) I jumped at the chance to justify trying this new-to-me bulky yarn: De-Vine from Blue Moon Fiber Arts. The yarn is crazy cool and different from anything I've knit with before.

Here's the website description:
    "Thirty six singles spun fine then 2 plied, then 4 plied, then take 8 of those sets of 4 ply and twist. DeVine!  Soft with a bounce and spring. DeVine takes color like our sock yarn, all bright and glorious."

How crazy is that, right? It has a dense, almost velvety texture. It's really nice. And the pattern is simple and fun so far. It involvs linen stitch and herringbone stitch, both of which are pretty rough on the hands (especially on size 15 needles!) but work so well with the variegated colorways of Blue Moon that it's worth it. You can read more about the KAL in Star's Ravelry group.

One more beauty shot...

That's most of the knitting I'm actively working on right now. I'm looking forward to some seriously focused knitting-and-blog-reading time this weekend, I feel so behind! I normally travel to Long Island for the holiday but the Fiasco and I are staying in CT this year. We'll spend Thanksgiving with his family and then spend the rest of the weekend packing our apartment up because we'll be moving to RI the following weekend! It's not a very far move but it is an exciting one because it means we 1) gain about 400 square feet of space (yaaaaaay) and 2) lose 45 minutes off my current commute (double yaaaaay). While I'll miss seeing my family very much, it will be good to get ahead on things around here. I hope you all have a good holiday!

Freedom! And an FO.

Guys... yesterday was my last day of work. Last day. LAST DAY! I've never just been unemployed before. I've worked since I was 15 and before that I babysat. I think the last time I had time that was not occupied with work or school was probably the summer of my freshman year of college before I was doing research... 8 years ago. Crazy.
So now I'm a little paralyzed by the impulse to do all the things ever. Wash the dishes! Clean the bathroom! Join a gym! Get a kitten! Go for hikes! Go to the beach! Read scientific papers! Research PhD programs! Apply for jobs! Work on designs! Knit some swatches! Get new tires! Take the cat to the vet!  Finish all my WIPs! Plan everything!!

Phew. It's only 8am and I'm already exhausted. ;) But I'm sure I'll figure it out. What would you do with oodles of free time?

In knitting news, last weekend I finished an old WIP (my 5th Year of Projects project!) while visiting my friends.

Terrible self-modeled shot, sorry!

This is the Zuzu's Petals pattern by Carina Spencer, of the Regina Hat fame. Obviously, I like Carina's patterns very much. I knitted her Whippoorwill shawl, too, a while back. Of all of these, I think the Zuzu's Petals is probably the most brilliant. Essentially, it's a cowl that looks like a kerchief-style-shawl when worn around the neck. The knitting starts off like a shawl, which I love since I am apparently a serial shawl-starter, but then you join it together and it turns into a cowl! My first thought upon seeing this pattern was omg why didn't I think of that?! Jealous. It's so clever!

Blocking it was a bit of an adventure. Due to its asymmetric cylindrical shape, laying it flat would not have worked super well and would've taken much longer to dry. So instead I took the vertical approach.

I pinned out all the 'shawl' points, then placed a water bottle on top of a bowl in the middle of the cowl and stretched the top edge of the cowl up. I precariously pinned it in place around the bottle so it stayed up well enough and let it dry. It looked like a crazy witch hat, but it worked!

Colorway: Irish Girlie Green

Can we take a second to talk about this yarn? Blue Moon Fiber Arts Marine Silk Worsted is freakin' gorgeous, people. It is a 4-ply mix of 51% silk, 29% Merino wool, and 20% Sea Cell®Rayon. Sea Cell is a cellulose fiber (like Tencel or lyocell) made from plant materials with some seaweed thrown in. Like all such fibers, it is shiny and silky. I actually didn't realize this yarn had wool in it until I looked it up, it felt like it was all silk and Sea Cell, but it is a bit less dense than a completely silk yarn would be. I really enjoyed working with it. Blue Moon has so many different kinds of yarn to offer besides Socks That Rock, I just never think to place an order with them that isn't for STR. I bought this skein last year at Stitches East, it's so much easier to impulse-buy when you can actually hold the yarn. I think if their other yarns were carried in more stores they would sell and be used much more than they seem to be now. Marine Silk only has 16 projects on Ravelry, and it's a really gorgeous yarn! A bit pricey, yes, but no more than any other luxury blend would be. I'll definitely be using it again for projects that would benefit from some silk content. For instance, I bet it would make a great Beribboned Hat, but perhaps knit at the DK weight size to compensate for the extra drapiness of silk.

Do you have a favorite little-used yarn?

YoP progress (5 down, 45 to go):
1. WIPs: 1/10 finished, 1/9 left in progress
2. SIPs: 0/5 actively in progress
3. New Projects: 1/14 finished, 2/13 left in progress
4. New Socks: 2/6 in progress
5. Of My Own Design: 3/16 finished, 2/13 left in progress