Friday, October 19, 2012

Friday Morning

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So far, today has been a pretty quiet morning.  The weather has been rainy and cool, and in response, all I want to do is eat soup and hang out with Mackie.  This week was busy at school - I finished all of my black dress patternwork, steamed my black wool fabric, and cut out the pattern pieces.  Last night, I started construction of the dress, and when I pinned the front and back bodice pieces together to check the fit before finalizing anything, it fit absolutely perfectly.  Paradoxically, the wool gives it both a crispness and a softness - the fabric itself is pretty structured, but it has just the slightest amount of give that the treated cotton muslin doesn't.  Just another reason to love wool.

Speaking of which, I've started another shawl project.  Who's surprised?

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I'm using Abstract Fiber Arts Matisse, a light fingering weight superwash BFL yarn, in the colorway Alfafa.  I'm curious to see how it blocks out, because it's just a little stiff and scratchy, and very tightly twisted.  I'm knitting another Ashton Shawlette, and scheming another Dee O'Keefe design in some Prairie.

In the last few weeks, my lack of knitting time has apparently been converted into pattern & yarn matching brilliance.  I have been sifting through Ravelry patterns hard, and finding all sorts of things to knit from stash yarn.  It's funny how this sort of thing comes in waves - I'll have weeks where I have no idea what to knit, and my stash weighs me down, but then I'll have a week like this where I'll get flashes of inspiration every two seconds and I want to Knit All The Things.

Last of all, the grey yarn is a new baby alpaca by Juniper Moon Farms.  It's worsted weight, and it is like butter.  I have a weird relationship with alpaca yarn: most of the time I'm not huge fan, but sometimes I touch an alpaca yarn and cannot live without it in my life.  Herriot was one of the latter - natural color; incredible softness; a warm, rustic wooliness that I can't resist.  I've started scheming about making a cowl out of it, based on the Salt Creek hat pattern.  We'll see how that goes.

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And of course, there's Mr. Mackie!  He was being really sleepy and cute this morning, and I managed to get a few good pictures of him with his curlers still in.

Happy Friday!

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