So much going on with the Seattle-based yarn dyer and store. I got my Yarn Dragon Kickstarter gift and the resulting store opens this Friday!

Yarn Dragon is Breathing Fire!

I don’t know how Jonathan does it all. In addition to setting up and opening a new factory yarn store, he custom-dyed yarn and sent out the most amazing kit for a Stephen West Shawl. Here’s the short unboxing video.

In addition to the Stephen West booklet, Hiberknitting 3, I also go five hanks of Yarn Dragon’s Silkpaca Fingering yarn in the most sublime colorways! I’m not sure if these colorways are custom only for Kickstarter gift kits, or just too new to be on the web site:

1. Talisman of the Sea
2. Fiberwing
3. Ring of Growing
4. Ruby Shield
5. Sword of Light

As you can imagine, I can’t wait to start this project. But I will have to since the KAL for Under the Harvest Moon is taking up most of my concentration right now!

And here’s the announcement for the grand opening in case you’re anywhere near Seattle for this momentous event.

Congratulations and good luck to all involved!

Current Knitting

I was zipping along on the Under the Harvest Moon Lace Shawl Knit-A-Long and then a bump in the road.

I finished the fourth chart (out of five) and my stitch count was perfect! So I decided to start on the fifth chart and got the first two rows finished.

If you look really closely, you can see that I started adding beads to the shawl.

The beads are rather small and don’t really show up. They also slow down the knitting process a lot. It’s particularly difficult to load beads onto the tiny crochet hook when my hand tremor is particularly pronounced.

But then the bump…I got to the end of the second row and my stitch counts are WAY off. Not even close. I need to tink back two rows and re-knit the first beaded row. It’s going to take a while just to tink. And then I’ll need to be ultra-careful when I re-knit the first beaded row.

I may focus a bit more on the helical-striped sock (that I’ve been neglecting).