the last custom of 2008

I mailed a package to a Canadian customer today. Had to go to the post office since it was an international item. I stood in line for 40 minutes. Ugh. I've decided not to do any more international shipments until the holiday insanity is over. This isn't a complaint about the post office, though. I really appreciate the postal staff in town, though--they are always pleasant and helpful, and my regular mail carrier has delivered and taken away an enormous number of parcels in the last two years. Lots of people have horror stories about their shoddy local service, and I am so grateful to live in a place where I never have cause for complaint.

Anyway, here's what was inside the package. I squeezed this one in when another custom order got delayed, and at the same time someone purchased some yarn for me and asked if I had time to knit it up.

This is my new Coldfire colorway, kettle-dyed on Marr Haven wool. It was much more muted than on my Shooting Star sock yarn, probably because the dye struck so much faster on the superwash wool. The colors didn't have a chance to meld together. Also, I think the Marr Haven absorbs a lot of dye.



This is my second project with Marr Haven. I was struck again by the similarities to Sweet Grass Wool's worsted Targhee. They are both mule spun, so I wonder how much the processing accounts for it. Both have a soft, furry texture but not much elasticity.

Zen Child longies, plus some gloves

I forgave the Full Belly Farm yarn for some of its imperfections after I blocked the longies. They smoothed out wonderfully and have a fantastic texture. Look Ma, no lumps!



Don't you just love the colorway? It's even better in person. I should've taken a closeup photo so you could see the subtle shifts in color, from turquoise to emerald to seaweed and aqua.

Denise of Zen-Child also sent me a rainbow colorway to work up. At first some of the colors were pooling all on one side of the pants or the other, but once I unraveled and decreased the total number of stitches for the body, the color distribution evened itself out nicely. This pair is knitted with Marr Haven yarn, a non-certified organic merino/Rambouillet blend. It pills a bit and isn't as silky soft as other merinos, but has that plush, squishy feel that Targhee has. And I was struck by how lightweight it was, given that it's a heavy worsted yarn (my gauge was about 4.25 sts/inch). The longies weighed 6.25 oz, compared to the FBF longies at 7.5 oz. Same size, similar gauges, but more than an oz difference.



I also cranked out a pair of fingerless gloves. I looked around for some grey machine washable yarn, but didn't see any that were quite the color I was looking for, so I dyed some aran BFL in a grey somewhere between medium and charcoal. My original thought was to do a pair with K4 P1 ribbing, but I got sidetracked by Soy Silk's fingerless glove pattern (link goes to a PDF file), with pseudo cables on the cuff and up the back. I knitted one glove and didn't care for it--the pseudo cables had an inverted pyramid shape that made the glove sort of baggy under the palm, and the way the pattern is written (or possibly the way my hand is shaped), the cables weren't centered on the back of my hand. Scrapped it and experimented with a baby cable cuff, then scrapped that and went back to my original concept.