Knit faster! Knit faster!

 

I have SO no excuse for BUYING MORE YARN.*  And I was therefore appalled** when On Line Yarn Store from Some Location Out of HP Lovecraft or Possibly Arthur Machen sent me a THIRTY PER CENT OFF come-on for the Bank Holiday weekend just past.  Now how is any mere mortal*** going to RESIST a THIRTY PERCENT OFF proposition?

            Reader, I didn’t.†

            Some day, when I am feeling like embarrassing myself further, I’ll show you my Leg Warmer Stash.  One of the ways I pretend to be in (some kind of) control of my Yarn Acquisition Addiction†† is by fobbing myself off by buying two skeins of Something Pretty for leg warmers.  Something pretty and (usually) cheap.†††  I began my Bank Holiday weekend survival tactics by running up a shopping cart of leg warmer yarn.  But in the first place I ALREADY HAVE ENOUGH LEG WARMER YARN FOR THE ENTIRE CHORUS LINE AT THE FOLIES BERGERE‡ AND THE ROCKETTES and in the second place . . . hey.  This is thirty per cent off.  I need my two-skeins-for-leg-warmers trick to keep me from expiring from a lack of new stash over the rest of the year when I’m paying full price.

               So I conceived an Evil Plan.

                I like bulky yarn.  But the bulky yarn I like—ie wool rather than acrylic/nylon/polyester/naugahyde—I can NEVER AFFORD, especially when what I want is enough to make a cardigan or a jumper with.  I got New Cardi’s nice fat yarn as a discontinued remainder.  At thirty percent off Rowan or Debbie Bliss or Louisa Harding is still too expensive.  But it’s not as too expensive.

                A big bulgy soft parcel arrived yesterday.

Beeeeeyooooootiful.

It’s an appley, spring-y green, although probably not as yellow as it looks on your computer screen, with lots of tweedy green, yellow and white flecks.

This green stuff is recommended for 6.5 mm needles!  Big!  Fat!  Yaaaaaay!‡‡

And this is a dark true red–dark enough that my poor camera in the available light is having trouble focussing.

This is only 5 mm needles but hey.  (Furthermore, the way I knit, I’ll probably need 6 mm anyway.)  It’s also very tweedy, with flecks of black, red and the tiny odd glint of orange.  

                But those of you who have also been tempted and fallen to ordering yarn on line . . . you know how sometimes stuff arrives and you think . . . oh.  That’s not quite what I was expecting.  NOT THIS TIME.

                . . . However, speaking of multicoloured yarn and discontinued remainders  . . . one of the tangential advantages of being a small size and liking cropped things is that I can squeeze‡‡‡ v-neck three-quarter-sleeve cropped sweaters out of bin ends. 

Like this one. Mmmmmm.

This is my first Louisa Harding.  Mmmmmm.  They were having a sale anyway, and this was cheaper yet, I think because it’s not a popular colour, but I like it.  Dunno how it looks on your screen, but it’s a very pale yellow, with LUMPS, which I believe are properly called slubs.  I was hideously indoctrinated to Yarn with Lumps last year with various secret projects, and while the secret projects crashed and burned I did learn to deal with Lumpy Yarn, and I like the effect it makes.  But this is merino, alpaca and silk and . . . mmmmmm.

Now, speaking of MULTICOLOURED.

This is 100% WOOL§ and it is MULTI.  COLOURED.  I’m failing to do it justice—since I am, as usual, taking photographs indoors late at night without the flash because the flash always makes things worse—so you’ll just have to take my word for it that it is scarlet red, russet orange, plum brown and white with purple splotches.  Yum.  And enough other people liked it that this was a bin end.

                Knit faster!  Knit faster!

* * *

* And have I mentioned that Fiona and I are getting together next week?  Of course we don’t have to go on a Yarn Adventure.^ 

^ And the pope isn’t Catholic.

 ** No, really.  Appalled.  

*** That is, knitter.  I daresay people whose cough-cough leisure activities extend no farther than golf and stamp collecting would not whimper if offered a thirty-percent-off yarn voucher.  Although I’m sure they’d love knitting if they tried it.^  

^ Stamp cosies!  Golf ball hats! 

† Which is why I was appalled, of course.  I knew I was doomed. 

†† Some madwoman on the forum a little while ago was accusing me of ruining her perfect system by introducing her to the concept of stash.  ???!!!!!??!?!  I didn’t know there was a knitter on the planet^ who didn’t have stash.  Who taught this person to knit?  My introduction was:  knit, purl, stash^^.  I caught on to stash first.^^^   Granted my Obsessive Collector lobe was already well grown and established, not to say dominant.# 

^ Or off it, for that matter.  There has been some evidence that the Gflytch do something like knitting, although it involves tentacles and eye-stalks.  

^^ Fiona, I’m looking at you.  

^^^ Knit second, and purl a poor third.  

#  Okay.  Dominant.  ::Eyes book shelves:: 

††† Somebody tell me why the vast majority of the really fabulous mixed-colour yarns are acrylic or some other human-contrived substance?  Aside from my beginner’s phobia of relentlessly solid-colour yarn which will relentlessly display every foible, not to say error, I do have some really nice muted or tweedy multicolour wool—the yarn for First Cardi among these, and my new Bank Holiday transgressions—but the loud stuff tends to be not natural fibres.  I resist the idea that people who want to knit merino and alpaca and silk and cashmere merely suffer painfully from good taste.  

‡ Leg warmers being all they wear in that revue so the leg warmers need to be . . . um . . . 

‡‡ The main failure of this devilish plan is that this yarn in particular is SO UNBELIEVABLY tactile and seductive (85% wool, 15% angora) that I now want it in several other colours.  Desperately.  Want.  If I’d never FONDLED it this yearning wouldn’t be nearly as formidable.

            I’m already a Rowan junkie.  Sigh.  I bought this a little while ago because . . . because . . .

Also MULTICOLOURED.

‡‡‡ If believing what patterns tell you isn’t too foolish 

§ Of which some unspecified percentage is merino, which means it waved to a merino sheep on its way out of the factory, like those CASHMERE BLEND sweaters that turn out to be 98.2% cotton.