Persistent Knitter

This weekend is the “Alpaca Extravaganza” at the local fairgrounds. Local breeders/farmers come and show their Alpacas, and bring Alpaca related products to sell. They also have demos and a lot of other things I’ve never seen because we’ve never managed to go at the right time. It’s good for about an hour of entertainment with the kids & there is yarn and spinning for us knitters/spinners to drool over and buy.

Last year I bought some variegated alpaca yarn; this year I swore I would only buy a solid, because I think it’ll be easier to knit. (For those keeping track, I’ve been using last year’s Alpaca purchase in Landra’s Gloves, which have been on hold for need of some design attention)

This year I bought two types of yarn:

Colors are pretty true in the pic. The yarn on the right is 8oz of a tweedy dark pink/dark burgandy yarn. I was thinking hat and glove set for Katie when I bought it (but reserve the right to totally change my mind). The other is 4oz of a custom dyed denimish blue. Still a bit tweedy when you look at it up close, but much more solid. The softness of this yarn is amazing.
I was thinking gloves or mittens with the blue for myself.

As we were driving home, my husband asked if I was sure I bought everything “I needed”. ha!

He also casually mentioned that he wouldn’t mind a sweater made out of Alpaca. Yeah, RIGHT.

Other acquisitions at the LYS from friday:

Yes, more needles. I’ve discovered the Brittany DPNs in the smaller sizes aren’t all evil. So, I had to get a ’set’ from 2.0mm up to 3.0mm. The book is one that has been around a while, but has great ideas in it. Stuff like doing short row shaping for shoulders, ways to setup your ribbing pattern so that it looks good once you seam, and so on.