Ruthless Knitting

Spring has sprung here in Green Bay, and I couldn’t be more pleased about it. Usually, our neighbors’ bulbs start to come up long before ours do, so when I noticed sprouts in their yards during my run yesterday, I figured that I’d still have to wait a while for anything to happen in ours. This time of year, I like to walk around the house about once a day, peering at the ground for signs of new life. I had done this the day before and found nothing, but look what was there to greet me yesterday:

They are little, but they still count.

Since the weather has taken a turn for the better and I’ve had the doors open for two days, I feel rejuvenated. I’m no longer plagued by restless late-winter dissatisfaction. I am positively bouncy. This has given me a much more patient and positive attitude toward my knitting. I have nearly finished the brioche scarf, though it seems ridiculously heavy in the now-springy weather. What possible use could I ever have for such a garment? Memories of the deep-winter temperatures fade pretty quickly from my mind, apparently.

I have also wrapped up the first half of the long-neglected Clementine Shawlette and started the second half. I even pulled out my oldest unfinished object — a cotton bathmat a la Mason-Dixon Knitting that I set aside about a year ago because I was bored with it and it hurt my wrists — and began working on it for about ten minutes every morning. I’m looking forward to finishing all three of these projects and starting a new (lightweight) sweater, but for now I am content. Thank goodness for spring.

Meanwhile, I ordered some Zephyr Wool-Silk from Sarah’s Yarns in the hope that it will work for the sleeves of the Interlacements sweater I recently described, and I couldn’t be happier with my shopping experience. Sarah’s prices on luxury yarns are unbeatable, she offers tons of shipping options, and she packed and mailed off the yarn immediately. I ordered on March 22 (in the afternoon, I think), and the yarn arrived on the 26th via the regular old U.S. Postal Service. And there was a weekend in there, people! The yarn was very nicely labeled and securely packaged to prevent its getting wet or destroyed, and Sarah included a whole bunch of color cards which will no doubt induce me to be a return customer. Sarah’s website is also excellent, with clear close-up photographs of flat and draped swatches for all the yarns. I highly recommend her shop.

As for the Zephyr — wow, is it ever nice. I swatched the laceweight held double, and it is light, bouncy, and soft as can be. It seems to be just what I was looking for.

Finally, as a potential solution to any future design dilemmas involving my attempts to counterbalance secrecy against the need to share and get input, I’ve joined Emilee and Beth in creating a private “design workshop,” which we will no doubt expand to include others in the future. I’m excited to see how that will work out.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 27th, 2007 at 10:17 am and is filed under Projects in Progress, Swatch-o-Rama. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.