Yesterday was a good day. The weather was beautiful, I didn't encounter too much bad traffic, I didn't run into any of the annoying, loud people striding through stores with a Bluetooth unit in their ear and no regard for the fellow human beings around them.

And there was yarn.
And books.
And a good big salad and a cup of tomato-basil soup and a huge cup of chocolate chai tea, with whipped cream on it no less.

I know some folks are less fond of the "naked yarn" shots, but I also know some people like to know what I'm gonna make. So here's (most of) the yarn bought between Stitches N Stuff and Michael's.



By project, here's the yarn:

Top row: large-needle knit simple lace scarf, probably a fairly wide scarf. This was kind of an impulse purchase - they had a scarf (knit in a different color and a more expensive version of the yarn - this yarn is Katia Ingenua which is less expensive than some of these kid-silk things - and I saw the scarf and I was all, "oooh, I want to make one like that." But not exactly. I'm going to look in my stitch treasuries and see what kind of simple - maybe sort of diamond-shaped pattern to it - lace intrigues me and do that.

Middle row, right to left:
The "Lady Detective" hat from Knit 2 Together. I had originally not planned to buy the yarn for this - I really like the hat, both the style and the allusion it makes (the "Lady Detective" in question is Miss Marple, but I also think that, perhaps in different colors, it's something Mma Ramotswe would wear, if, for example, she had to travel abroad to a cooler climate to do some research). I looked at the Noro Iro and said to myself, "You do NOT need a hat made with $40 worth of yarn." But I kept going back to it, and looking at that particular colorway (it's gorgeous, kind of like a pastel version of Monet's waterlilies) and thinking about the hat, and thinking about the various vintage buckles that my mom inherited from her mom, and how if I asked her, she'd pick one out and give it to me to put on my hat...and I wound up buying the yarn. I think this is going to be the first project I start from this batch of yarn.

The Koolhaas hat from the Holiday issue of Interweave Knits - that's the deep blue Debbie Bliss dk weight. I had originally picked out some Elsebeth Lavold silky tweed for it but then I saw the Debbie Bliss and (a) like the color better and (b) realized it would be a LOT easier to knit with and the cables would probably show better. Besides, it's just such a gorgeous cobalt color and I don't have a hat that color.

The Cobblestone Pullover from the fall 07 Interweave Knits. This was what I actually mainly planned to get yarn for - I wasn't sure if I'd find a color of Skye Tweed (turns out they didn't carry it - I thought they did) or Cascade 220 (couldn't find a color I really loved that had enough hanks in the same dyelot). Then I saw this magenta Auracania. Yes, it's a heavy-worsted and I may have to play with needle size to make gauge (and I bought a bit extra, just to be on the safe side, yardage wise). I do plan to knit from alternating skeins each round to try to cut down on the pooliness - and I tried to pick the seven skeins with the least extreme-appearing color changes. We'll see. If I don't like how it looks for Cobblestone once I get going, there's enough for some other kind of pullover or for a vest. (Not quite enough, I think, for a cardigan.) But I really like the magenta - it's such an unusual color. That's one of the things I like about knitting - you can decide to make stuff in a color that NO ONE is showing in their "collections" of fashion for the year.

Bottom row, left to right: a toy unicorn (the orange is for muzzle and hooves and the variegated green is for the horn). This was another thing I planned on getting yarn for. The yarn is actually white with tiny orange, purple, and (IIRC) green flecks in it - because if you can't use a "fantasy" looking yarn for a unicorn, where can you use it? The orange is an Ella Rae (a brand that's new to me) dk weight with some silk in it - for the hooves and muzzle. And the green variegated is for the horn, it picks up the colors in the "flecks" of the yarn. (For the mane - I think I have a yarn in my stash from back when the fuzzy-scarf craze was hot, which will match with all the other colors. If not, doubtless I can find something that will work.

The brown and cream are for the teddy bear out of the IK Holiday issue. They are from Michael's; they are part of Bernat's "Hey, look! We have [a vanishingly small percentage of] luxury fibers in some of our yarns!" line. This is their supposed cashmere yarn - 5% cashmere with the balance being fairly soft synthetics. I will leave it to others to debate the ethics of mixing cashmere with nylon and acrylic. The yarn was a nice price, it's soft, it's the right colors for the teddy bear. (I just hope I bought enough; I didn't write down the yardage so I had to guess. Most toys don't take much anyway - I was a little surprised to look at my notes and see that the unicorn required 200 g of dk weight, but then it's a pretty huge critter.)

I also picked up (not shown) a couple of odd balls of Paton's "Classic Wool" (or whatever it's called) to add to my store for the crocheted blanket. Which, yes, I'm going to pull back out sometime and work on again.

I also picked up some books - both at Barron's (which was undergoing a remodeling, making it a bit harder to shop) and at the Books a Million (which is about twice the size of the one near me, and thus, has a greater selection). I wound up buying another book on the Crimean War - I'm very nearly done (like, 10 pages from being done) with "The Reason Why" and I realize I want to know more. (I also just finished one of Anne Perry's William Monk mysteries and there are allusions made in that to the Crimean War). It is just one of those things that American schoolchildren don't really learn about, I suppose because that era is so taken up with our own civil war that there's not time to mention what's going on in the rest of the world.

I also picked up a book called "Ancient Rome on 50 Denarii a Day" which is, as you might guess, a mock guidebook to "traveling" in ancient Rome. Some of the passages I read made me chuckle, so I bought it.

Didn't add any knitting books to the book-stash; all the ones I saw either were ones I already had, or when I flipped through them, they disappointed me. (How many learn-to-knit books with patterns for iPod cozies does this world need? How many books do we need that promote a further generation gap by emphasizing how [insert craft name here] is really hip and cool and not merely the pastime of our grandmothers and other allegedly boring aged relatives?)

And I got some Christmas shopping done, which is always good. This time of year is when I start looking around with half an eye open for "Is there anything here that would make an ideal gift for..."

(One thing I bought - which I can mention because I know he doesn't read this - is "The little box of Flair" [yes, from Office Space] for my brother - apparently it's a box full of those "message pins" like what Jennifer Aniston's character had to wear as "flair" for Tchotcke's. Although if there is one of the buttons with Milton's "I could burn this place down" quotation on it, I just might steal it. Seeing as we're going through another round of temperature-control problems in this building.)