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The prizes for Malabrigo March came in last week. Tobias and I had agreed on 20 skeins of their soon-to-be new Superwash Merino wool and 10 skeins of their fairly new Silky Merino. Aren't they generous? They seemed willing to donate more but 30 skeins is about all I can handle at the moment in terms of organizing and mailing. Plus, many of the Junkies were donating prizes as well. =)
20 skeins of Superwash yarn! Isn't that insane? I've never even knit a complete pair of socks yet... but, having Malabrigo sock yarn is definitely inspiring me to do it. Here are a few closeups as well:
The yarn is so new that the colors aren't even named yet!
Want some Silky Merino action too?
Yum!
The 30 skeins were not all that I found in the bag however...
They included 4 skeins of their limited edition Organic Cotton! I love the natural colors they used for this yarn. I haven't done much cotton knitting, but, of course, since Malabrigo has cotton yarn I might as well start. ^_^
A few days after receiving my package I found another notice on my door left by DHL. The tag said that the package couldn't be delivered w/o my signature... and that it was from Uruguay. I figured they were confused but the notice came again the next day, so, I called and it turned out that there was another box waiting for me. I went to pick it up after work and it definitely was from Uruguay.
I could already sense Malabrigo as I opened the box. It was packed with more skeins of yarn! Another batch of sock yarn, 5 3-skein packs of unnamed worsted yarn (which I later found out was from a new dyeing technique), and 3 full packages of their Merino Worsted in 3 colors... Hongos, Purple-Lime, and one I don't remember.
The first thing I did when I got home was send a message to Tobias to see if it was a mistake... but, it wasn't. He said that Antonio actually 'smuggled' the extra skeins of yarn for me to do what I choose. I decided that I'll be saving these for future Malabrigo celebrations. =)
I'll take pictures of this new batch of yarn soon!
For now, enjoy a bit more yarn pr0n:
Yum. =)
check it out.
Stitches Midwest turned out to be... interesting. SO many stores and SO MUCH YARN. Quite overwhelming. Luckily, with the help of ravelry.com I was able to create a list of projects I wanted to knit in the future. My list included the pattern-suggested yarn as well as alternative yarns that other knitters used. Oh ravelry, so helpful.
I brought my friend Danielle along. Out of the 3 people I've taught to knit she's the only one who stuck with it. She already conquered cables and knitting in the round... it took me over 6 months to get that far... I guess she's a really good student... or I'm just an awesome teacher. LoL.
Tangent. ... So... here's what I managed to find:
Mmm, silky wool. I brought my Branching Out scarf as my WIP to Stitches... I was really enjoying knitting it at the time (right now it's been waiting for me to finish my circular shrug--see below). I had already decided it would make an awesome gift so I decided to grab another ball so I could make another. I think the second one will be for my mom.
This yarn is a long story. =)
At the end of last winter I was at Coach with my best friend Lora. They had these beautiful cashmere blend scarves for sale. Sale to them was still over $200. x_X I decided, that I would find similar colors and a similar cashmere yarn and knit them for myself.
Finding both the same colors and yarn proved to be difficult... it wasn't until Stitches that I saw 3 of the almost perfect color ways. They weren't cashmere though... they happened to be 100% alpaca. We passed up the table and I kept them in the back of my mind. Finally, on our semi-second round of the market I decided to buy them. 100% alpaca is cRaZy soft... of course, not as orgasmic as cashmere, but, would definitely make a great scarf. So, here's to my Coach knock-off.
Mmm, sock yarn. ... I hate knitting socks. =( After my 3 separate attempts I still don't have a pair of socks that fit or match. Luckily, this skein of Lorna's Lace is for Eunny Jang's Endpaper Mitts. I've been eye-ing them ever since I fell into the world of knitting blogs. It'll be my first color work project, and, I'm quite excited. I, strangely, ended up with a very similar color choice to her original pair...
I just love the blue-brown combo.
Well, those were my purchases from this year's Stitches Midwest. I'm already looking forward to next year. Sadly, we didn't win any prizes, but, Danielle got a free mini-hank of Malabrigo lace weight. mmmm. I ended up getting my picture taken for The Panopticon's 1000 Knitter's Project--and I'm knitter 100!
We also felt some buttery soft cashmere... sadly the small skein was $46. Definitely out of my budget. It was so soft we went back after our initial round through the market to get a second touch. ^_^
I'll leave you with one last picture.
Danielle and I decided to do our own mini knit-along. We chose the Circular Shrug pattern, and, we've been working hardcore on it since we started. So hardcore, in fact, that we both claim the project is sucking the life out of us. Hopefully it'll be done soon so she can wear it and I can take pictures and gift it.
Knit hard!
