Sundara Love

I have to formally announce, I fell in love! with Sundara Yarn. I will devote all my earnings to her, and her yarn.

Ok, it should be enough for a crazy vow. I've recently subscribed a lot of yarn from Sundara which was quite impossible to get before. I've been eyeing her website since a year ago but have never ordered a thing because I thought my crappy knitting skills will inevitably ruin the beautiful yarn she dyes. Then when I improved a little, it became so popular and cannot be obtained a few minutes after she posted the yarn on her web.

Anyway, the Fingering Silky Merino of the Seasons subscription has arrived yesterday! It usually takes shorter time to ship and it takes approximately a week more possibly due to the peak mailing seasons. These are what I have got in the mail:

Carmel Apple for Autumn





The Life Aquatic for Winter




I just love them. The colours are so nice and the yarn base is so attractive. I have a minute of hesitation before I ordered extra skeins of FSM but for sure I am glad that I did that. My mom greedily rubbed MY Carmel Apple against her neck and said, "It's so soft and not itchy at all." and commented, "Can you make a smaller scarf for me? The shawl you made last time is too large to wear sometimes." Um, I think one of the skein will be given to my dearest, lovely mother in the form of a scarf, or a cowl. (Well, a cowl will use less yarn right? That means I can keep more of it for the greedy me? ;) )

Hemlock Ring Blanket (Part 2)

My Hemlock Ring Blanket goes incredibly fast, here comes a photo.

I used a very creative way to present this, can you see where I took this photo? Yes! on my head! And if you see more carefully, you can see a little pinky row counter nearly falling out of the blanket. It's tied at the yarn end of the CO, a very convenient way to keep your row counter with your circular knitting without losing it.

The progress of the blanket is far more than what is shown here. I've completed row 46 of the Feather and Fan Section, which means I have one and a half more pattern to go if I do not add extra repeats to that advised in the original pattern. I still have a lot of yarn left so I will probably add 3 or 4 more repeats as told by fellow ravelers! (Thanks to the magic of internet!)

I should have worked more yesterday night, but a tragedy happened. My Knitpicks Intergeable Circular was broken!! To be more precise, it was the plastic cable detached from the metal connector piece. As I read from Ravelry, it is not an uncommon thing for Knitpicks. I have known this and so I took extreme care while sliding the stitches from one needle to the cable and then to the other needle... but, you know, accidents are accidents.... -_- who can predict?

I will probably go and grab another pair of 6mm addi turbo circular needles to continue. I hope the addis will be more durable.....

Hemlock Ring Blanket

It has been a long time after my last posting. I hope people will not blame me. (Well, are there still people reading this I suspect.) I drafted quite a number of blog post for my knitting in 2008 so updates are coming.

I finally started casting on something that I bought from the Jimmy Beans Wool some days ago. I thought I bought a lot. The very first initiative to make me start casting this on is that I claimed to one of my knitting friend+yarn buddy "I am on a yarn diet and I got to use up 500g of yarn before further purchase". At that moment I was crocheting a lace shawl and there's no way I can use up 500g of yarn at that time.

The crochet shawl was completed, finally, after 3 weeks hard work. And, I bought yarn, well, I should say, I joined a yarn club from dkknits. It's equivalent to 12 skeins of 100g sock yarn, beautifully hand dyed, and dyed personally, i.e. for me, and myself only. How can I resist the temptation? And I just received some yarn from Sundara, and will receive more in the coming weeks before the holidays. OH MY GOD. What commitment I have done. I was ashamed by looking at the yarn and I decided a good way. Do something bulky and consume more yarn as soon as possible.

After working on the crochet shawl, I made a small cowl using bulky thick and thin yarn which will be posted later. Ok, time to go back to the topic. I have just started that Hemlock Ring Blanket, which I adored for quite some time and is on my Ravelry queue. I have bought 2 skeins of Cascade EcoWool (250g each) which is explicitly used for the pattern. Using 6mm needles which I am not familiar with after knitting a lot of fingering weight yarn, I hope this blanket can be finished within 2 weeks. And I can consume a total of 500g of yarn that I committed! yay!

Just cast it on and started working it using my KnitPicks Intergeable Circular, it's my first experience to use Magic Loop. I felt that I am learning a new skill and I have modified it a bit now because my cable is not long enough for a complete magic loop. I just pull one loop out near my right hand needle and continue working without much problem. It is expected that I can work in a round without making any loops soon. I am at Row 21 now after a hour of knitting. It's fast in the first few rows, which is quite understandable for this sort of knitting. I will upload the photos when I finish the first part of the blanket.

Yay! I finally type something!
(and I gave up writing Chinese in the blog, it's too time consuming.)