It’s amazing how seldom I make it to my local yarn store anymore.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I need more yarn.

Need!  What a Silly Concept!

I am very grateful that when I find yarn I like, I can just buy it.  It doesn’t require a pre-determined project.  It doesn’t need to match any other yarn.  The color doesn’t need to conform to a set palette.  I see it, like it and buy it.  Simple.

Yesterday, I went to my local yarn store, Twist Knitting & Spinning  to purchase the new Rowan Men’s Nordic Collection by Arne & Carlos (described in my last blog entry) and to buy some Rowan Felted Tweed yarn to make the Jens turtleneck.

Since I already have nine balls of this color of Rowan Felted Tweed:

I just needed enough of a darker, background color to make Jens:

Despite all the knitting and color work I do, I really suck at picking good contrasting colors.  So I asked my friend to choose for me.  She chose:

I think this will make a beautiful combination.

But I also walked out of my Local Yarn Store with a few other items.  You can’t blame me for the first one.

It was Zauberball on clearance!  You also can’t blame for this purchase!

They had a gorgeous selection of Uneek Fingering yarns in these stunning color ways.  I defy you to tell me you could have passed by without buying at least on of these beauties!  Finally, I made a “necessary yarn purchase.”

I have a confession.  Once I had done about 12 inches of work on the Parallax 3.0 Scarf (Alasdair’s brilliant double-knitting design). I had mentioned I wouldn’t post a progress photo until I had completed a full pattern repeat.  Well, I started to realize that the Kauni colorways I had chosen overlapped colors too often, making it very difficult to do 3-color double-knitting.  I frogged it all and will start again with colorways that have more contrast.

I have both the Rowan Nordic Men’s Collection book and Felted Tweed yarn on order as well.

See?!?  All completely understandable purchases. Right?

Current Knitting

Despite what photos might indicate, I’ve made a lot of progress on the See Grass Shawl since Wednesday.

Just to give some perspective, the cone is a full-size cone of yarn.  The final shawl should be a good size for a wrap.  Since I have to do a lot of “Sl1, K1, PSSO” combinations, I have unvented a way of doing them in a single action.  I’ll write it up in next Monday’s blog hopefully.