Sunday, March 07, 2010

Yarn Parade

You know you got it bad when your sister, a non-knitter, starts buying yarn for you.

Thursday my sister told us that she saw some pretty yarn at Tuesday Morning. On Friday she bought some for us and on Saturday we were all on the Tuesday Morning yarn crawl. We bought way too much but the prices were reasonable and the quality good. Most of the yarn is KFI, Knitting Fever, brands.





Last month I purchased the Corrie Fair Isle Vest kit in the neutral and bold colorways from Knit Picks.


I received all the yarn for the bold version but only 5 of the skeins for the neutral version. When I called them they said that I didn't order all of the skeins. Further checking on my part revealed that they didn't have the colors in stock and therefore moved them to the notify list. They are supposed to come in this month and since I don't have plans to order anything else so much for "Free Shipping" I thought I was taking advantage of by adding some things to my original order to make it $50.00.

This past week I received two of the best books I've ever purchased. The Haapsalu Shawl and Shirley Paden's Knitwear Design Workshop.


The first is a compilation of Estonian shawl patterns from the town of Haapsalu. It is not your average pattern book but a beautiful large and heavy coffee table-sized book. It contains over 100 stitch patterns and the instructions for creating your very own Haapsalu Shawl. The book contains the history of the Haapsalu shawl and is beautiful photographed. Each of the stitch patterns is clearly photographed and the charts are large enough to easily copy without enlarging.

I own many books on knitwear design but Knitwear Design Workshop is one of the most comprehensive I've seen. It is everything I was looking for when I purchased Deborah Newton's Designing Knitwear. There are numerous worksheets and the formulas used to calculate things such as armhole or neck shaping are very will explained. I plan to put this book to the test in a couple of weeks and post a follow-up.

I'm looking forward to our workshop with Margaret Fisher. I completed the last of my swatches last night. This is the second time we have sponsored an instructor. I'm taking all four workshop classes. Details can be found here Palmetto Purlers.

4 comments:

kathy b said...

Bev

Im glad you scored good prices on all that yarn. You are so disciplined, I cannot wait to see it get all knit up.

Melodye said...

I need to live in your neck of the woods! As for the book, why restrain yourself? Come join us if you want to!

Lara said...

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the Knitwear Design book! I've seen the Interweave promos & Clara Parkes' review this week but not much more than that.

Nik said...

THAT yarn was at Tuesday Morning?!!! Lawd, I'm going to have to go tomorrow. If you hear about a homeless woman with lots of yarn on the news, that'll probably be me. Because if they have THAT at our store, I'm going to spend all my money.