Yarny ideas

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This is Elann Silken Kydd. I've never knit with lace weight yarn or mohair yarn. I'm apprehensive about both, so combining them together is probably a bad place to begin. I've been looking through my stitch dictionaries trying to find something nice for these two balls. I haven't yet decided. It'll definitely be lacy, either a lacy scarf or maybe a cowl/ring neck thing. These balls feel lovely. Soft.

I'm still thinking about making a cable bag for Vicki. I didn't like the chunky yarn I was using before (too thin, wrong color, and I didn't have enough yarn for a bag) so I picked up some of this thicker super bulky yarn to see if I can get better results. It's Lion Brand Wool-Ease Thick & Quick. I've never used this yarn before, but I figure it can't be too different from the regular worsted weight Wool-Ease which I like.

I've been kicking ideas around for which cable patterns I want to use on the bag. I just can't do a basic cross cable kind of thing, along the lines of the Margaret Nicole bags that Vicki pointed out to me aeons ago. So I'm aiming for something that is the same but different.

I was thinking of doing something with Pattern 16.14 from HG5 (pg 37), which looks very similar to the Saxon Braid pattern from BW3 (pg 86). I thought this might make a nice center cable motif. And then I could surround this one with some other cable, probably a basic 3 over 3 cross cable.

Then I thought, why not try using that cable pattern from my Persephone Scarf? That should look pretty nice as an allover cable pattern. However I wouldn't be able to get too many repeats widthwise of the pattern to really show it off. I think this would probably work better on a very large tote bag.

I'm also thinking about using the center cable from my Osiris Scarf and throwing in a different cable on either side of this because I just don't see using either of the other two cables from the scarf in a bag.

Of course the best thing to do is stick with some simple cable pattern. Despite knowing that most people like things simple, I have a predilection for making things more complicated than they have to be.

I've never worked with this yarn before and it calls for using US13 needles. Lately I've been tending towards using the same or larger size needle recommended on the yarn label for cable work. However since this will be a bag, I'm thinking I'd probably want a tighter knit and might go for a smaller needle size than US13. Maybe even US11, US10.5 or US10. Good news is that I have all these sizes on hand so it's not a problem to play around with them to see which comes out better.

I have some Elann Highland Sport to play around with. I'll make a scarf with it and see how it feels. I wanted to see how my Osiris Scarf would come out using this more "classic" wool yarn, compared with the Elann Baby Cashmere I had chosen before. I'm hoping it will provide better stitch definition.

It'll be interesting to see how this feels in a scarf. I'm still thinking of substituting this for a Doctor Who Scarf, instead of the Brown Sheep Nature Spun suggested for the project. And I'm thinking of this yarn for fingerless mitts.



At 63 yards per ball, I think 7 to 8 balls of Classic Elite Beatrice would be needed for a decent length scarf. This merino wool comes in pretty colors and feels soft. I'm not sure this would be good for showing off cables. So I'll have to brainstorm for something simple.

This Debbie Bliss Pure Cashmere feels SO SOFT, but comes in such short yardages (45 yds) that you'd need a whole lot more skeins than you anticipate to create something way smaller than you had hoped it would be. I'm guessing 3 to 4 skeins for a hat, 3 skeins for small or short fingerless mitts, 5 to 6 skeins for a small lacy scarf, 8 to 10 skeins for a longer or cable scarf.

Here's an updated photo of the scarf I've been working on. Yes, it's the same one you saw here, but this photo shows the blue color better because I was able to take this photo during the daytime. I think I managed t o come away with a fairly decent shot of the scarf despite Miss M's attempts to move/grab hte scarf before I could snap photos of it. This will most likely go to my SIL. The scarf is turning out nicely, great pattern for TV knitting.

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I've started reading L'oiseau des Tenèbres by Michael Connelly. I think the English title is A Darkness More Than Night. Yes, it does seem strange to read a contemporary English mystery novel translated into French, but I figure it would allow me to brush up on my French reading, even if it is at a snail's pace. And I really do mean a snail's pace. Or perhaps more precisely, slower than frozen molasses. I've only gotten through 2 pages. Why so slow going? Because I spend much of my time looking up words/phrases in a dictionary and writing them down in a notebook. And in the process, I end up browsing/reading all the other entries in the dictionary too. (It's an unabridged French-English dictionary so it is chock full of good stuff). I do have to say that it is going much faster than reading SciFi in French that was translated from English, (slow due to the translation of SciFi neologisms that you can never find in a dictionary; this book was great in English, but difficult in French).

I've never even read this author in English. And it seems really foolish to read a book in French when I've been trying to read The Beekeeper's Apprentice by Laurie R. King, in English, for several months. We'll see how this goes. I probably won't get very far.

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