Someday I'll learn, right?

Handpainted yarn, cables, moss stitch? Sure they'll all go together! This was my thinking as I started Robbyn's beautiful Peony Purse. With each row I questioned myself more and more....was this really going to work? The colors aren't fighting with the pattern, are they? No, not at all. Really. Honest. This delusional thinking went on until I'd finished the first cable repeat, and then reality was staring me in the face: patterned yarn and texture don't get along well. No matter how much I wish this wasn't the case, it's true. Someday I'll get that fact through my thick head - either that, or I'll keep bashing my head against the wall so much that perhaps I'll associate that pain with the futility of trying this combination again.

Much frogging later, I stared at my beautiful Voodoo yarn, trying to think of something tiny and special to showcase the colors and glorious silkiness. A purse of some sort seemed ideal, but something with a simple design so the colorway wouldn't fight it. Searched online, flipped through all of my patterns, wracked my brain for an idea to expand on and design myself. Nothing. Then I remembered: there's a silk purse pattern in Mindful Knitting. Ran to the bookshelf, opened it up, and there it was - the perfect, simple purse shape. I cast on and started knitting away, only to find another problem. The dreaded pooling. Nooooo! Not the pooling! I know many embrace the vagaries of handpainted yarn, loving the zigs and zags that the colors form when left to themselves. Not me. I admit to being a control freak extraordinaire. I want those colors to balance well across whatever I'm knitting, and I will make that happen come hell or high water, dammit! Frogged again. Started over.










Much better.

I also finished up a super fast gift. Arden's favorite preschool teacher is moving on to another job and today was her last day. Didn't find out she was leaving until Monday, so this needed to be a something quick. Slippers sounded good...and didn't I have a skein of Patons Bohemian lying around? Why yes! Bought it last year on a whim, mainly because the yarn is so unbelievably soft. Perfect for slippers. Knit them up in the blink of an eye - would you believe I cast on a total of sixteen stitches? Now that's some bulky yarn. They came out nicely - so soft and cuddly. Arden's teacher loved them and was last seen petting them as I walked out of the classroom.