Wollmeise is in das haus!

Now that ItShe and Grape (finally) have their birthday presents, it's time to unleash the parade of Wollmesie that has made it's way all the way from Germany to my house. There is nothing more I say about the Wollmeise that hasn't already been said, the colors are amazing, the intensity, the saturation, and the combination of colors are beautiful.

Let me say that I stalked and stalked and stalked and was finally rewarded. I don't want to tell you how may hours and how many times I tried, but let's say it was totally worth it, partly due to the fact that I could gift some to ItShe and Grape. I have had the extreme good luck of snagging some Wollmeise twice from The Wollmeise herself.

The first shipment was August 8, 2008. I had done my "homework" and found out that in order to get the most out of the higher shipping cost from Germany (which is exactly what Germany charges the Wollmeise) you should either order 2 skeins (for the small envelope) or 5 skeins (for the larger envelope). The thing about the updates are if you don't figure out what you want quickly you yarn can be bought out from under you by another fan of Wollmeise. I wanted to get 5 skeins so I spent some time on the website and found the colors I wanted for Grape, ItShe and myself and stalked. I got the skein I wanted for each of them.

Grape got Poison No. 5 (dark intensity) here is a picture of it:

ItShe got Rhabarber (light intensity):

I got Am kalten Polar (medium), Lowenzahn (dark), Miss May(medium):






The next time I caught the update on August 22 by pure luck I wanted more than a few skeins of Versuchskaninchen 1 (medium), and I happen to stubble across some 5 skeins of it. Here is a picture:

There is one more thing, I signed up for the lottery for the privilege of getting to be part of the first Wollmeise sock club, and the lottery gods were smiling on me, I got in, I'll show you later.

When Last We Left This Blog

I had just came back from a Mediterranean cruise, it was wonderful and it seems like lifetimes ago, seriously. It was a fabulous time there is no way to sum it up, but I look over 1700 pictures if that gives you a clue.

So much has happened this summer but let's get to the knitting. First the FO's. The last thing on this blog was the Rivendell Socks from The Eclectic Sole (great book). It was a great pattern and the little rings were something I had never done before. They have been done for a while, here is a picture:

The next FO is my Italian Jaywalkers, I started these on the cruise ship and finished them on the ship. They are great an always remind me of darting in and out of traffic in Rome (which was crazy). Andiamo!

The next FO is my pair of Lite Brite Crusoe socks. Normally I knit a pattern the way that it is written but this time I change the top (I like ribbing on the top of my sock) and thankfully I looked up the pattern on Ravelry and saw that people were having sizing issues so I increased it to 60 stitches (the pattern calls for 48 stitches for the larger size). I really love the yarn, it's by Perchance to Knit in colorway Vintage and I (heart) it big time, I love the bold and different shades of familiar colors. Here it is:

That picture is really dark here is a better picture of the yarn: That's a much better picture.

I loved the pattern so much because it's great to break up pooling in hand dyed yarn, I decided to make my best friend Lindsay a pair for her birthday and to celebrate her running the Chicago Marathon. She is awesome, she finished in 4 hours and 38 mins, this is truly a feat I cannot even imagine. That same night she got engaged, very exciting. So I found the perfect yarn for her, it's called Lower Wacker Drive by Yarnzombie Gaslight Dyeworks. Lower Wacker Drive is a famous street in Chicago and it's a very important part of the movie Blues Brothers (which has a special place in Lindsay's heart) so it was perfect for her. Here are the socks:

The last FO is the Katarina Sweater from cocoknits, it was a great knit, fast, wonderful and lovely, the problem is I don't have a half decent photo of it. I have to get someone to take a photo of me wearing it so you can see it better, and it's black so the hope of me taking a good picture without me wearing it is hopeless. But here is the least crappy of them all:

O.K. so that I think that's it for FO, I have two projects on the needles right now, but I will save that for another day.