Have you been to Vogue Knitting’s web site and checked out the free patterns from their 25th Anniversary cover series? A great many of them lean toward the shapeless, but I am absolutely in love (don’t worry, Melissa knows, and she’s confident it’s no threat) with Debbie Bliss‘s “Silver Belle.”
The construction is fascinating, if a bit daunting. The peplum is knit from the hem up, with cable extensions at each end that wind up just inside the button bands. There’s also a cable extension up the center back. Then each sleeve/body side is knit from the wrist inward and they’re joined to the peplum, after which come the button bands.
I spent a bit of time yesterday trolling about the discount yarn sites (Little Knits, Webs, KnitPicks) looking for some bright moss green (like Oregon) or grey solid-colored alpaca or part-alpaca, but no luck. I want alpaca because that feels good to me, so I know I’ll really wear the sweater once (if?) it’s done; I want discount because this sweater takes about 2,000 yards in my size, so if I make it I’m looking at buying 2+ bags of yarn. If you have any hot tips or suggestions, please let me know.
The weather in Oakland is lovely just now—sunny with a breeze off the bay that keeps things from getting too hot—so Melissa and I headed off to an Oakland A’s game in the afternoon. It was a give-away day, and we each now own a Nick Swisher belt buckle.
They are large and very, very shiny and will come in quite handy if either of us decides someday to take up steer wranglin’.
Since I am a knitter and this is a knitting blog, I took my yarn to the game—a one-pound cone of apple-green Peaches ‘n Creme. I tried to get my knitting into this shot taken by the “Game Day” photographer, but didn’t hold it up high enough. Sorry to let our side down.
By the way, that is an Albuquerque Isotopes hat I’m wearing.
I finished one dish cloth and got most of the way through another, and the A’s won 2-1, despite getting only two hits to Anaheim’s eight.
I kept going on the knitting last night, finishing up my Phoenix scarf (pic and pattern tomorrow) and the first of a set of four variations on a theme for a pattern I’m hoping to find a home for once they’re all done. This afternoon I’m off to a “tasting” of Uruguayan yarns at Article Pract.