January 25, 2011

Dealer, enabler, friend? Not sure which any more!

So in November I Participated in NaNoWriMo. National Novel Writing Month.  I wrote a novel that will likely never see the light of day.  During that process I buddied up with another author who I think of as Professional and had a bit of a "fangirl" attraction too.  we challenged each other through Wrimo and both won.  In the process of discussing our creative endeavors he suggested I follow @BrightEyedDyer on twitter. So I did.

She Dyes yarn, mostly sock yarn, but every year picks a few novels and makes a colorway blend that represents those books.  After a few back and forth replies I ordered some of her yarn.

I have never knitted with Sock yarn.  It is SMALL.  I had to buy a new circular needle because the smallest I had was an 8 and I needed at most a 2 for this yarn.  and I always get circulars because I hate straights. I drop them every time I try to throw a knitted stitch so I just ignore them at all costs. 

A few days later I recieved in the mail, a plain yellow envelope.  Inside it had the most fun ball of yarn I had ever seen.  She called it "Childhood" and I admit it did make me giggle like a kid again.  I had decided that I was going to use this new yarn in a project using an Entrelac pattern because of the way the colors shifted.  The envelope also had a nice simple purple that went well with Childhood.  I was good to go...or so I thought.

I make hats, lots of hats. I wanted to make a hat.

This hat started with the purple in the swirly increase I seem to do with most of my hats. 8 sections, Magic loop method, increasing 1 stitch per section on every other row until the top of the hat was big enough for my head and the number of stitches on the needles was a multiple of 6.  Then I did a round of Entrelac base triangles in the purple also. 

Then the first row of Childhood entrelac squares.  This round took FOREVER.  I was still learning the pattern and was still turning the entire project back and forth ever 6 stitches for 48 squares.  Took me just over a week.  This had to change.  The second round of Entrelac squares went the other direction around the hat.  I tried doing the Pearling without turning the project. It worked. Knocked out the second round in 3 days,  but now I was running out of yarn.

Contacted @BrightEyedDyer again, asked about the purple, or a green or a teal or a bright blue or a yellow or any of the other colors in the Childhood. 

Well I just got another envelope, has bright green and bright turquoise. Now I want to change my mind on how the pattern is and I have a sinking feeling that I will be ripping out ALL of the second round of Childhood so that I can fit Turquoise and green in with more purple lol.

Someday this will be a GREAT looking hat lol.