New yarn and a new project

Okay, time to look at pretty yarn!

When I pulled these new skeins of Viola out to photograph them I realized they too are pretty much the colours we picked for our living room, so technically they should all end up as pillows or something for the house, but I suppose they will be socks and hats and cowls like everything else I knit.  If I was more organized (and maybe it'll happen someday) I would just knit them all together into a big stripey sweater.  YUM.

The first thing I did when I got to The Purple Purl the other night was to ask Emily what yarns are her current favourites, and she told me I should try her totally local Mooresburg DK, so that was the first thing I picked up.

All the colours were amazing but I am trying to choose ones with some green in them, since that's what best suits my colouring... and the first thing that caught my eye were these two blues.  I discovered later that the colourway is called Sea Storm - the same thing I bought from Emily all those years ago when she first started out! 

At least it looks a little different on this base yarn, so it's not like I have a closet full of just one thing.  Really it was striking how different each colourway looks depending on the fibers in the base yarn.  The colours on the Polworth/Apalca base yarn, for example - Emily's other recommendation - were downright muted compared to the way they looked on a simple merino single.

If I could face knitting with low-twist single-ply yarn I would have been in trouble because holy crow, the colours were just glittering on that base yarn!  Sorry I didn't get a picture of that.  I didn't think it was safe for me to have a reminder of how gorgeous they all were.

My all-time favourite fiber is bluefaced Leicester so I had to have some of that.  I was drawn to this blue/purple skein called Cosmic even though I have zero plans for it.

I couldn't leave without this pretty one-off experimental colourway either.  It's sort of coppery, which I always find hard to resist, and anyway, it's such a simple merino fingering - it'll be great for gender-neutral socks or lots of other things.

I've been stalled on thinking of a new project I'd like to knit but a few days ago a friend asked for suggestions that might suit a Pride and Prejudice type knitting swap and when I dug around I found a fingerless glove pattern that floored me - Eflets, by Elise Dupont.  Sadly the pattern is in a French magazine and though it's supposed to be more widely available this month that doesn't do me much good this weekend!

So, for the first time in a long time, I'm thinking about working up a project without a pattern.  Eflets is a double layered glove with a thumb and it looks like it's worked in the round, but I'll hold off for the real thing to do that.  I've got a simpler approach in mind, just enough to get a knitting fix!  I'm determined to have actual knitting time over the next few days - no writing, no house planning (even though I need to start looking at custom mechanized blinds very soon), just rest and relaxation.

Hope you get some of that too and I'll see you next week!