Wanna see what I’m working on -

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(sorry about that) - what I’m working on this weekend? Nah. Trust me, you don’t.

Seriously. It looks like this:

See? Not the most exciting part of the job. Syntax. Sequence. Size and yardage calculations.

Feh.

Let’s move on to something with a little more visual interest, shall we?

Aaaaahhhh. That’s more like it. That’s the pure-silk laceweight from the other day’s School Products haul. I’m not about to confess all (that’d be… vulgar, wouldn’t it?), but I’m up for a little show & tell. Only thing is, I’m really struggling with color balance and perception - even more than usual. That’s why I started with the silk, which at least has the virtue of being undyed. (And BTW it’s going to stay that way. Way too beautiful to mess with, I think.)

Close-ups:

4-ply, about 52 WPI; 500 grams; 4,087 yards.

As I mentioned yesterday, Astrid bought one of these too, and defended the purchase with “I can always sell it, you know.” To which I replied, “Oh yes, you are SO going to be willing to part with that once it’s yours!” Hah. Mine. Mine mine mine mine minemineminemine - that’s what I say.

What am I going to do with it? I do have some ideas, and I’m thinking maybe I should have bought two of these skeins (wonder if Astrid would sell me hers…?). I’ve got a bolt of cream-colored Shantung kicking around in my fabric stash, and some serious dress design notions that have been marinating in my head for a while now. Now all I need is a bride (and maybe a few thousand seed pearls), and I can really go to town.

 
Silk/cashmere -

70/30; 4-ply; about 30 WPI; about 2,700 yards. (Ooof - and nothing like a macro shot to make me realize how filthy my old scale rule is. Sorry….) Not sure what this is going to be - won’t know until after I overdye it. The color (actually a touch less saturated than this) doesn’t excite me, but I think it’ll make a good base for several lovely jewel-tone possibilities - and the sheen and texture would be fabulous in any color.

 
Cotton/silk/cashmere -

50/35/15; 2-ply; about 42 WPI; about 5,500 yards I think. (Not perfectly sure yet, because School Products does a weird packaging thing with these mill ends - more about that another time.) I’m madly in love with this. The color does just as much for me as the beautiful soft hand, though I’m having the usual trouble getting the photo to do it justice (the real thing is a softer richer shade, more lush and less coppery). What would you call it? salmon? melon? maybe coral - that’s the closest thing I can think of. I do have some ideas for this, though they’re still pretty vague. Oh wait, I just got hit by another one - SUCH a cool one. I need to clone myself - so many designs, so little time.

 
And then… there’s the infamous purple cobwebweight. Color - oh dear. I took this without flash…

… and this with…

… and the trouble is, somehow they’re BOTH accurate!

And so is this one:

This one isn’t inaccurate either:

Do you begin to see why I wanted this stuff? It is solid, yet it is all those colors - though if I had to choose one I guess I’d say overall the first shot is the most nearly representative of the four. In most lights, anyway….

Italian merino, 2/48, about 60 WPI, one full cone, and I’m not actually going to type either the weight or the yardage, for the same reason I didn’t give the length of the bed the other day. You can figure it out easily enough. Sonya did, and obligingly translated it into mileage thank you very much, as if it wasn’t embarrassing enough already.

Jennifer knows too - possibly because in an unguarded moment I may actually have told her. She called me yesterday, and asked me, among other things, “XX,XXX yards? WHAT were you THINKING?”

To which I replied “Thinking? What does thinking have to do with it? Fumes, that’s what it was. Fumes.”

And yet.

True, I lusted. True, I was severely under the influence. True, I yielded to a deep visceral impulse. True, I could have done this in a much more practical and economical way. Like, for instance, by taking a discreet sample and sending it to Jennifer with a note saying “hey, can you make me something like this?” She could have, and she would have, and it would have been at least as beautiful, very possibly more so, and it would have cost me practically nothing. (Jen, wouldn’t you have just loved that? Yeah, I know lambing is almost over, but bottle-feeding has begun, and I can just imagine how overjoyed you’d be to add that little item to your to-do list.)

Nevertheless - I actually was thinking. Up to a point, anyway.

For starters, I already have two completely different projects in mind for it. One is a variation on an existing design - sprang to mind full-blown the moment I saw the yarn; the other is new, still evolving, and was triggered this morning by the yarn itself, as I was handling it and playing with its possibilities. Sometimes that’s what the want-it-now factor is really about: you literally get your hands on something beautiful, and you spend some quality time with it, and that sets the creative juices flowing in a way that just won’t happen through imagination alone. The germ of the idea may already be there, but the visual and tactile stimulus is what gets it off the ground. Flight of inspiration: dirt cheap at mumbledy bucks per thousand yards; or rather - priceless, as they used to say in the Visa commercial.

As to the quantity being outrageously more than I’ll ever use - well, hey, I’m not the only lace knitter I know. I’ve sometimes thought it’d be nice to give out prizes now and then for various occasions - you know, just like the Big Kids on the Blog. For instance, I recently let my 500th comment pass without fanfare because I didn’t have anything exciting to give away. Well - it so happens that the 500th commenter is a lace knitter. Better late than never. Janice, if you send me your snail address you might get something nice in the mail.

I also know a lace knitter who just had a birthday.

I also know a lace knitter who is on a tight budget.

And I bet I know some other lace knitters, without even knowing that I know them.

See? I spend a few bucks, and suddenly I’m rich, because I have something really cool that I can give away.

One hell of a bargain, seems to me - and that is what I was thinking.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 23rd, 2007 at 6:57 pm and is filed under Lace, Stash Talk, Full Fathom Five. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.