Travel Diversions

I went on a little trip to Boston for a couple of days, and took along the Fingerless Garter Mitts from One Skein for the train ride.

The patterns in this book all call for the use of one skein of yarn (various weights of yarns for different projects). It's a really appealing concept for a person like me who has a silly habit of picking up lone skeins of yarn just because I like collecting them.

I had some major frogging issues early on: the instructions say to "slide bead into place close to needle", so I just knit the beads through the stitches like for Grumperina's Odessa. Nope, turns out, I was just supposed to literally slide the bead up to the needle and NOT knit it through the stitch (grumble-grumble...wish they could've included some illustration). I do like the book though, but apparently there are mistakes. The designer Leigh Radford has listed errata here, but according to some things I've seen on message boards, there may be more mistakes lurking about.



Oh, and I MADE THOSE NEEDLES! The night before I left, I realized I didn't have any 2.25mm needles, so I sanded down a couple of bamboo skewers until they passed through the 2.25mm hole on my Susan Bates needle size/ gauge checker. Then I cut a couple of cubes out of a wine cork, and sanded those down too. In case you're curious, bamboo skewers start out at a size 3.



While in Boston, I went to A Good Yarn, a LYS recommended by the Subway Knitter on her blog. It's a great little shop, and I came away with a set of 10cm long ebony dpns. I have never seen such short needles! How perfect for knitting the fingers on gloves! The yarn is from Seacoast Handpainted Yarns, located in Brentwood, New Hampshire. This colorway is called "Strawberry Patch", and the colors are deeper than what's on screen. I could only find their yarns on their ebay store.

Finally, an embarassing story; the other night, a bag of yarn fell off the top of my stash tower, and when it hit the floor, it woke up both me and my bf. I really have too much yarn. I admit it, but will keep buying it.