mixing it up

When my mom was in Italy this summer, she bought some yarn. It's a blue-green colorway with little flaggy bits hanging off one of the plies -- nice colors, but difficult texture. She tried knitting something with it and it didn't work out well at all, so she handed it to me with the challenge to figure out what to do with it. I tried a variety of needle sizes and a variety of stitches. No luck. My suggestion? Hook it up with a bunch of yarns of varying but cohesive colors and textures to make a wrap, something similar to Jane Thornley's Green Before the Gold (scroll down), maybe, although possibly knit lengthwise.

This project will need lots of scrap balls of yarn. You know what that means, don't you? Stash diving!

So, into the leftovers box we went, my trusty yarn-diving companion and I. Crappy pic in the artificial light this early morning, but given that I now have a cough that's every bit as bad as Jesse's and the Nyquil (which helped me sleep last night, for the first time in three nights) has me feeling all loosey goosey this morning, so be it. :-) Anyway, mom's yarn is in the center, still with ballband. Leah and I chose bluey-greens. Some purples worked their way in there, because we just can't help our purple-loving selves, and some cream alpaca too. Not all of these balls will make the final cut, but I'll hand this collection over to mom soon and see what happens next.

Found some treasures in that stash and tidied things up (untangled, rewound) while we were in there too.



You know what happened this week? I found myself with exactly one...ONE!...project on the needles. It's a bulky thing, though, and wasn't suitable for grabbing quickly to take along as a small project to work on while I was waiting to pick Leah up from the American Red Cross babysitting course. Socks to the rescue! It's been a while since I was actively knitting socks and the time has come to bump up production again, so here we go while I decide what else to cast on, since I know full well that I need multiple projects to fit different moods and settings. Fun to look at all the options and anticipate a cast-on frenzy while I mix it up and get some new projects in motion.

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I wish the blog had a scratch and sniff option because Scott is baking bread with Asiago cheese, white wine, sauteed onions and garlic. It smells so incredibly good. Can't wait to taste it.