sheep in the city

Just a touch of pink...

I have been knitting away on tons of projects, trying as hard as I can to finish samples for classes that I'm going to be teaching this Fall. I've also been trying hard not to be too distracted by mitered masterpieces, long legs and the socks that cover them (yes...I'm jealous!), and a few finished and almost finished stoles! Good grief, how's a girl supposed to get anything done when there are so many pretty things to look at?! (and when one WandaWoman keeps sending me links to more pretty stuff?!)

So...what are all these projects? Well, I'm knitting up a messenger bag out of Tahki Cotton Classic. I had the yarn in my stash (yes, it's pink!) and found that it was a nice substitute for the Rowan Denim that is no longer produced. Since this is going to be one of the classes that I'm teaching at Colorful Yarns, I wanted the yarn that I chose to be accessible to the people in the class. Anywhoo, I was knitting along on the miles of stockinette yesterday when I noticed that I had made a mistake in the garter stitch border way at the beginning! I wasn't too afraid. I can fix mistakes. So I dropped the stitch down and started picking it back up. It looked awful! What was I doing wrong?! I finally figured out that I needed to be picking up stitches in alternating knits and purls, but it still looked like ass. Do any of you have suggestions for picking up a dropped stitch in garter stitch, after I feel like I've stretched the crap out of the yarn? Here's a picture below of the offensive area. I had already picked up about 6 or so stitches and I finally had to put it away yesterday because I was getting so frustrated! What kills me is that it probably is going to look worse when I get finished than it did to begin with. It was such a minor flaw, nobody would have noticed it but me. Arrgh!

The rest of the projects in the picture are my Malabrigo sweater, my BubbleGum Hill Country Yarns that I'm dying to cast on for, Fetching from the latest Knitty, and the mohair shawlette from the book Greetings From Knit Cafe. I'm trying to figure out the best way to make good progress on all of them, and stay on schedule. I'm thinking that the upcoming three day weekend will be a big part of this all coming together. Or at least that's my hope!

Without further ado, here is the yarn that I picked up over the weekend at the String Anniversary sale. I had been eyeing it for some time, and just couldn't pass it up at 50% off! It's Rowan Harris Aran in the most beautiful bright lavendar colorway. If you look closely, you can see some hot pink flecks in it. Ahhh, I love it. It makes me happy. I don't think that I ever posted about this before, but in the spring I bought enough of this color in the DK weight to make the Sunrise Circle Jacket. I got it home and alas it was the totally wrong guage! So, horror of horrors, I took it back to the shop. It was a sad day. I wasn't about to have them order in the Aran weight because it was double the price of the DK. But now I have exactly what I need for the sweater, and it cost what the DK originally cost me! I love it when the knitting universe opens up and solves my knitterly problems perfectly. Oh happy day!