mmmMalabrigo

i am now officially obsessed with Malabrigo. it comes in such beautiful colors and it's so unbelievably soft. mmmm.

last week i went on a spontaneous trip out to evanston to check out their yarn stores. i brought kevin along with me. after a strange mix-up we got to closeknit and took a look around. i didn't really see anything that was really grabbing me. i wanted something REALLY thick in blues and browns. i had seen a scarf on grey's anatomy that i loved and wanted to make.

sadly, i couldn't find yarn that i wanted so i settled on this blue varigated wool. at this point kevin had become impatient and really wanted to leave. so, i had the hank wound into a nice ball and went to leave.
as i turned around to shut the door behind me i noticed a few skeins of yarn sitting on a table. my eyes moved to the tag and i read malabrigo. i made a grabbing motion towards it but at the next moment kevin pulled me out of the door.

the rest of our time in evanston was spent walking around, eating, and exploring. the whole time i couldn't get malabrigo out of my head. i've read SO much about it and i really wanted to get a feel. so, i finally asked kevin if i could go back. he agreed to wait in the car while i bought my yarn.

there wasn't a lot to choose from. only a few single skeins of random colors. i noticed glazed carrot, sunset, lettuce, and indigo. i went for the glazed carrot. when i got to the front i noticed they had a few more skeins at the counter. i asked if they were for sale and lady said yes and that they had just recieved a new shipment. she went to the back and brought out bags and bags of new malabrigo for me to look at. it was bliss. i ended up buying charrua and vaa.


<sup>charrua: browns and blues



vaa: blues</sup>

i LOVE them. the yarn store woman also gave me a copy of a pattern for a moss rib stitch scarf. i decided to give it a try. the pattern calls for 2 skeins of malabrigo but i only purchased one in each color. so, instead of CO 32 stitches i did 24. i ended up with a good 63 inches.


^{malabrigo charrua scarf in moss rib!}

i've been watchin the knitting help forums often and they had been recommending the scrunchable scarf pattern to use with malabrigo so i figured i should try it out. a few days later i returned to closeknits in evanston to buy 3 more skeins in tortuga, velvet grapes, and lettuce.

i decided to take another trip to some new yarn stores. i really like to drive out and find shops that carry a decent selection and have great customer service. i've been looking for some manos del uruguay yarn in any of their varigated patterns and i managed to find some. i also found a shop with MORE malabrigo at a cheaper price than i had originally bought it at. so i ended up getting 2 skeins of amber gold. beautiful!

for the scrunchable scarf i ended up using velvet grapes.


^{scrunchable scarf in velvet grapes}

i'm not too fond of the pattern. i definitly like the moss rib stitch more, but this is still pretty decent. i like how it causes the columns of stockinette to tilt a little on their side. but, what i like about the moss rib is that each column of stockinette has a decent amount of space in between, it's even on both sides, and it creates deep channels. here's a close-up.


^{reminds me of pebbles or cobblestone}

well, that's my deal with mmmMalabrigo. if you havn't knit with it yet you should definitely try it.


^{mmmmmmmalabrigo!}