purlsandmurmers

Anny Blatt Book Arrived

The new Anny Blatt book arrived. 

I am not knitting the lovely sweater, which is called Valadon, in the color shown which is a light silvery gray/light gray mix.  I am using this shade of Angora Super, which is called Celeste, and a lighter blue for the Victoria.   IRL the celeste is similar to the color shown here, but perhaps just a tad more blue. The Victoria is back-ordered but should be in before I am ready to start the sweater.

It will not be a fast project, the jacquard-like bodice is knit at 30 stitches to 10 cm.

I feel doubly lucky because Valadon is not the only sweater I am interested in knitting in this book.

There are at least two other sweaters that I find very compelling, including this one, called Kennedy with fabulous cables and i-cord lacing in Merinos and Victoria.

It seems that I every time I decide I dislike some knitting technique, I immediately fall in love with sweater after sweater that employs that technique.  I learned to love ribbing by knitting ribbed sweater after ribbed sweater.  I see that I shall learn to love i-cord as well.

On other fronts I am knitting but have made no progress on blocking or sewing together.  I collapse in my chair in a state of happy exhaustion each night and am thrilled to manage a little stockinette.

Which reminds me, I need to go count rows.

A misplaced X

The Eleanor Roosevelt knit-in was loads of fun and really a nice way to spend a wet dreary Sunday afternoon.

As seems to have been the rule last week, I came unprepared and frazzled.  I had my yarn, and I had the block I had knitted previously, but I forgot my camera and forgot several other things.  I also paid no mind to what I might be knitting once I arrived.

Namely I just never thought about the idea that a block could be something other than plain stockinette.  Of course once I was actually there and started looking at what everyone else was knitting it occurred to me that it might have been nice to think about doing something interesting with my block before I actually started.

Instead I just winged it.  I thought I would put a cabled X in the middle of a simple stockinette swatch with garter stitch borders.  A pretty simple idea really.  I think I should be able to come up with something more interesting on the spur of the moment, but the simple truth was that I couldn't.

For the most part, it worked well although  I didn't quite finish the patch.  I could have stayed later.  A few women were hanging in to finish and I only had about an inch of garter stitch to go.  But by that time I realized that I had missed in my off the cuff attempt placing the cable motif at the center of the block; it was about an inch too low.  I decided to rip and restart, saving the block for next year.

This is apparently going to be an annual event.  One intrepid knitter brought in 127 blocks.  I have no intention of competing with her, but I think that I can manage a few blocks for next year.  It would be fun on occasion, when I want to play with a pattern, or for those days when I want to knit something (anything) and don't have a project at the appropriate stage.  Blocks are also small and portable and a good way to use up some of the yarn left over from knitting hats and scarves for the children at the city schools.

I Must Knit This

I was toodling along various pathways on the web yesterday and I came across this sweater:

I was obsessed.  I must knit this.

The spring Anny Blatt and Bouton d'Or books came a couple of months ago and nothing really caught my fancy; not that the designs were bad, there was just nothing begging to be knit.

This sweater is in Anny Blatt Horst 13, the Horst series are not included in my "subscription" to Anny Blatt books and I often forget to look for them.

When I found this,  on Yarn Market's new Knitch Magazine I was obsessed with finding out what it was and where I could get it.

The book and the yarn are on their way to me even though I won't be knitting this until cool weather beckons again.

It struck me, as I clicked "buy" on my computer that until Thursday I hadn't bought any yarn since February; and now here I am on a mini buying spree of sorts.

Otherwise, nothing much has been happening.  Nothing has been finished although the "to be blocked" and "to be completed" piles are growing.

Oh I take that back.  I finished a block for to take with me tomorrow for the Eleanor Roosevelt Knit-In down at the Roosevelt Historic Site.  We are knitting blocks for Warm Up America, and I have one to knit while I am there.