People In Norway...

...must be really, really, really relaxed. I finally scored a 2.5mm needle while shopping on my vacation last week, so I could begin my Dale Baby sweater. Last night, after finishing a whole pattern repeat (10 rows?) I realized my gauge Did Not Look Good. I had about 36 sts per 4" and I was supposed to have 32. Now, as you may know, a 2.5mm is about a size 1. I had to go up to a size a 4 before my gauge was loose enough. And I was still, technically, on vacation.

I went to two yarn stores while I was in Phoenix. One I had visited on a previous trip and liked, but this time they honked me off when I had to use the bathroom and they told me to go across the (6-lane) street and go to Staples. I didn't buy anything there. The second is called Jessica Knits, and it was awesome. I loved it so much. I bought Koigu there, and a skein of Cherry Tree Hill sock yarn, and two balls of Hempathy (for gloves) and a knitting needle I don't need. (And they have a bathroom.) That place is now my Official Phoenix Yarn Store.

Read the third Dirk & Steele book while I was in Phoenix. It made No Sense At All. People who write fantasy need to understand we can't read their minds. They need to build their world and create their magic and make the reader see it. That book was the literary equivalent of untangling yarn. Which, since I own scissors and know how to spit-splice, I generally don't wast a lot of time doing. But, I've already bought the fourth one, so I guess I'll carry on. Without scissors.

Name That Couple

Vickie Howell has teamed up with Southwest Trading Company for a new (I suppose -- new to me anyway) line of yarn. It looks nice and incorporates the semi-exotic fibers SWTC is known for. What has my gears whirring, though, is the LOVE line; each color is named after a particular couple. Some of them I get but some I don't:

Sara & Maurice -- ?

Gail & Dewey -- ?

Peter & Mary Jane -- oh! I just got that one as I typed it: check!

Ennis & Jack -- check

Napolean & Deb -- check

Jack & Sally -- ?

Andi & Blaine -- check (shouldn't this be a little pinker?)

Mulder & Scully -- check

Harold & Maude -- check

Lloyd & Diane -- ?

Shelby & Jackson -- ?

Buttercup & Wesley -- check

June & Johnny -- check

Joel & Clementine -- ?

Her Craft line is named after knitters that Vickie knows so, in that case, they may be names other people might not recognize. I don't know if that is the how it is for the couples, either. Perhaps some of them aren't "famous."

Color Theory

Ali recently turned me on to a new yarn shop and a new yarn therein: Loopy Ewe and Sweet Georgia Yarns.

Sweet Georgia makes gorgeous yarn and is a Buffy fan. They have Buffy-inspired colorways: Angel, Slayer and Willow. I was very much interested in this for a variety of reasons, but the main one right now is that in two out of three cases, the colors are not what I would have chosen. I think the Angel has too much white, and, while I love the Willow, being a Big Fan of Green, it doesn’t say “Willow” to me.

So now I’m wondering: what DOES say Willow to me and why? If I were designing colorways for specific people what would I choose and why? When I was thinking about Willow, I was thinking about orange and pink and green because, in the first years of Buffy, she wore a lot of those colors and also she seemed very much like a young girl and those colors are young and girlish. As she became older and more powerful and sophisticated, her palette changed.

Of course this is subjective. I’d be interested to hear other opinions. Say you were designing a color palette for your favorite fictional character: what and why?

Yarn Fun

First we had this



I added some Kool-Aid



And now it is this



Ta-dah! I think it looks like apples. Soooo much better than before. I don't have a clue why I bought that red/orange/yellow stuff. It's not me at all. Of course, I still have a shawl made from it. That stuff is the 2 1/2 skeins I had left over. I guess I could always dye the shawl....

You remember I was making a pair of Hedera socks to give to my husband's stepmother for Christmas? Well, I HATED the way the pattern looked over the heel gusset so I ripped it all out and started a different pattern and now I have this



This sock is cable pattern instead of lace, but the designer still didn't do a very efficient job of working the pattern around the gusset. I thought about ripping these and starting again, but I would like to have these done by Christmas.