beautiful things

New Seasons shipment... spoilers!

I'm not sure it's really possible to remain unspoiled about a Sundara Seasons shipment but anyway, here's some blank space if you are...

So yes, the latest Seasons shipment arrived at our house yesterday... and I did in fact manage to remain unspoiled up until then, although I did see the names of some of the yarns on the ISO/Destash list (yes, the trading frenzy has begun already).  For those of you still unfamiliar with the whole Sundara thing, well, let's just say it's kinda hard to explain!

At first I thought my shipment was all wrong as many of the colors looked the same, until I examined the labels and saw that they were in fact different colors, all very dark though.  Some people keep their yarn in the bags for better trading but, besides the fact that I don't do that, in this case unwrapping them was a necessity because it was only then that you could see the different colors.

The final verdict = love, of course.  I am surprised that the colors are so dark and manly and similar this time around but they are beautiful and as usual look great together as well.

This photo shows the colors pretty true, at least on my monitor:

From left to right: bluebells (spring), aurora borealis (summer), brambleberry (autumn) and night blossom (winter).

I think the first three especially look gorgeous together.  Night blossom has more of a reddish tint, although some people have described both their brambleberry and night blossom to be purple - not my skeins!

And of course, here are the obligatory more abstract shots... still loving my camera and the zoom lens.  Colors here vary from relatively true to completely off (especially bluebells).

Wow!!!!

Ok, more eye candy... 

Yup, it's Seasons FSM (which arrived a few weeks ago), taken with my new DSLR on my new desk at home, in it's new location by a window!  It's a pretty grey day today but the sun was peeking in for a short while earlier this afternoon and I figured I'd take advantage of it.

The set up is not completely ideal as it's more back lit than side lit - I took a few side lit shots but there's not much space to get in at that angle, and my zoom lens requires me to be 3 feet away.

But wow, yeah.  Gorgeous yarn, gorgeous camera, and a better set up than before.  What more could a girl ask for?!  (Maybe actually knitting with some of this yarn?!.... shhhh....!)

First the basics, here are the four seasons:

From left to right: flaming flamingo (summer), sugar plum (spring), life aquatic (winter) and carmel apple (autumn).  I ordered an extra skein of spring, hoping that would be my favorite, and it is!  I'm thinking of a lovely spring tempest (ravelry, pattern) without the stripes.  Carmel apple seems to be the least popular on the ravelry boards and I can see why.  It's a beautiful color but I think you need a certain skin tone for it to look good.  Not sure yet what I'm going to do with it or the others but I've been abstaining from the flurry of trading that followed the recent Sundara shipments.  If I do trade, I want to be looking for something specific, for a specific project, which I'm not right now, otherwise it's just too hard to figure out I think.

The straight stash shots (ie for ravelry) are definitely an improvement but not particularly exciting.  One of the things I've really wanted a DSLR for is to get those lovely depth of field shots I'm always so envious of where only things at a particular distance are in focus and everything else is blurry.  Today I broke out the manual (which I have been carefully reading through) and broke out of auto mode to play with depth of field settings.  For example, here on the left we have f5.6 and on the right, f36.0. (I don't know if you can really tell the difference at a small size but when they are large, it's a lot more obvious.)

That last photo on the right had a shutter speed of 8 seconds!

Those last two were also shot using the extra lens my husband got me (have I mentioned again how impressed I am with the research he did?!)  I had to step way back to get 3' away so that it would even focus but to me, this is where the fun really is!

And finally, it's pretty similar to some of the ones above but this is one of my favorites...



Love the yarn, love the camera! Can't wait to get more familiar and better with the camera either...

Seasons of... love!

So yes, I did indeed receive my first Sundara Seasons shipment last week - four beautiful skeins of sock yarn.

We have here, from left to right, beach glass (spring), cerulean seas (summer), persimmon over green papaya (autumn) and deadly nightshade (winter).  The colors are all pretty close on my monitor except for the elusive cerulean seas which is actually deeper and more turquoise.  This image shows it closer to real life... except you can tell from the background that I had to do a lot of color correction to achieve that!  The beaach glass is also overexposed in the photo. (I really need to set myself up with a light box as I'm getting tired of struggling with the stainless steel counter photos.)

As usual, I played around with color combinations, throwing in my other Sundara sock for good measure.

I can't seem to get away from thinking in terms of giraffe color schemes!

The citrus zinger, beach glass and cerulean seas look great together too, which I didn't notice until I put my entire Sundara sock collection together... turns out I more or less have a rainbow!  And how pretty is that?!

Bag full of Sundara

Stopped at the post office on the way into the city...

Love!

The rest of my MadelineTosh arrived last week and I am at last ready to start making giraffes!

From left to right: Victory Garden, Lettuce Leaf, Citrus, Bark and Ginseng.

I LOVE ginseng - I think it is one of my favorite colorways ever, and all of them are luscious and beautiful and perfect giraffe colors... except perhaps for Victory Garden which I bought more because it looked like a pretty colorway than for its giraffe-appropriateness.  It's not as light as some of the others I've seen photographed (eg this one) but I like it all the same.  

Of course now I have been obsessing about which combinations to use for how many giraffes of what size... all the solids plus ginseng look great with the citrus zinger and victory garden and lettuce leaf look good together too for some other project.

I'm also thinking now of 3-color projects - a sock giraffe (ravelry, pattern) as well as a Baby Surprise Jacket or three.

For now, I have started on a very tiny giraffe in citrus zinger and ginseng - I finished all four legs last night.  Yes, I am finally knitting with some Sundara and I have to say that I love it all the more!!!  The yarn is sproingy and gorgeous to knit with.  The colorwork on the legs is fiddly and it's hard to tell how the MadelineTosh is as I am not knitting with it on its own ever but so far this is looking to be one cute little giraffe...

Resolution

So, I bought a lot of yarn yesterday.  In fact, I have bought a lot of yarn this month, you don't even want to know how much.

This whole Sundara business has kind of changed things for me... I have fallen in love with color all over again big time and I can't seem to get enough, not just of Sundara, but of indie and small dyers in general that have gorgeous gorgeous colorways.  In fact, I think I have moved on just a little from Sundara... not that I've even knit with any of her yarns yet(!) but I have a small collection of random skeins I managed to snag on Ravelry, and I have all my seasons subscriptions coming up, and given the difficulty and complications of getting what you actually want, I'm actually glad the latest new subscriptions closed before I had made a decision about signing up or not because there is plenty of other gorgeous yarn to be had - my wallet will agree!

Not that I have given up competitive yarn buying either... I managed to score one skein of Troika Sport after all in yesterday's Mama Blue update - in penny.  I think these will make perfect Baby Bell Bottoms with matching hat and mittens.  In the update frenzy, I didn't even notice that it was sport and not sock but I couldn't be happier as it was sport I really wanted!  The way the yarn was "flying off the shelves" though was utter craziness.  I still can't believe this kind of yarn buying frenzy goes on.  It's such a strange phenomenon to me, and then of course people end up buying stuff they don't really want and then there's a lot of trading going on.  I was actually very restrained as I saw a lot of sock yarn flit past my screen and I didn't even go for it, what with my newfound realization that I really don't need a lot of sock yarn, especially not random sock yarn that I don't have any specific project planned for it.

Anyway, more of my purchases will get revealed... slowly.

And, I am thinking of making a resolution: no yarn buying in October, and perhaps not in November or December either!!!  There would, of course, be a few exceptions:

1) Rhinebeck.  Yeah, that's a bit of a problem.  I'm hoping to go with a non-knitting friend of mine who was intrigued by the idea of "sheep and wool" and a bit of a getaway.  If I do go, I'll have to set myself a strict budget and maybe try to limit myself to only purchasing for the other exceptions below.

2) I am really limiting gift knitting between now and the baby, although I do have two gifts I'd like to make for Christmas.  One I already have the yarn for, but I need the yarn for the other.  There's a possible third but I have the yarn for that too.

3) Believe it or not, I should be pretty much set with yarn for all the baby knitting I'd like to do except for the Cardigan for Merry, so I'm allowed to get that.  

4) I may need more sKNITches Big Tryst for the barn raising quilt.

5) I have store credits at three stores so I'm allowed to spend those.

6) Oh yeah, Pigeon Roof Studios handspun, I'm allowed that if I can get my hands on it, plus I'm also on the "want" list for some bitter orange.

Could I do it, could I make it to the new year with these 6 exceptions?  i am going to try, especially as those exceptions give me quite a bit of leeway anyway...!

Lace

So somehow, having declared myself "off lace" for a while, I find myself planning not one, not two, but three lace projects!  At minimum!

Yes, the Sundara Lace Silk I snapped up on Ravelry arrived last week:

This is mahogany over marmalade and grey over pink.  Aren't they beautiful?

To be honest, I'm not sure about mahogany over marmalade as a wardrobe color for me, beautiful though it is.  I'm tempted to see what I can trade it for, but I'm still so confused about what exactly to try and get in Sundara that I may just wait for a bit.

For the grey over pink, I'm thinking of Muir, which I've had my eye on for a while.  The ravelry page for the pattern has a lot of useful links, including for a beaded version of the chart.  Yes - I am thinking of putting beads in!  I may even go shopping for them today!

I'm also thinking of going to Purl and spending my store credit on more lace weight yarn for a quick Swallowtail Shawl for a friend we are visiting in a couple of weeks.  Yes, that's in a couple of weeks!  But it's at the end of a week long vacation and people seem to knit this up pretty quickly so I am hopeful.  I'm not sure what colors this friend likes but for some reason I'm thinking green, inspired largely by the photos of Laminaria, another pattern I've had my eye on for a while.  Ironically, I'm thinking of making this for myself using my Lanas Puras Melosa Lace Weight that I purchased for something else that didn't end up coming to fruition and has since been floating plan-less in my stash.  Yes - knitting from stash!  I'm pretty excited about it myself, even though I'm not sure quite when I'll get to this project.  Both Muir and Laminaria would be for myself - I have knit several stoles and wraps as gifts but have yet to have one for myself.  Well, aside from the Clementine Shawlette but that doesn't exactly provide a lot of warmth and I have to admit that I have actually yet to wear it.  I should have worn it to a recent wedding though with a new brown and cream dress I bought for the occasion... why didn't I think of that?!

I do so love Ravelry though, although I think I'm starting to spend too much time on it again.  The search capabilities are really getting quite refined - you can now search projects, not just patterns, which means, for example, that I was able to look at all Laminarias that are in lace weight wool to get a feel for how it might come out.  I've been uncertain about triangular shawls as I've never owned one or tried one, but this yarn is not so precious or expensive that I am unwilling to try it.

My other beautiful Sundara-off-Ravelry purchase was of 2 skeins of Delphiniums Fingering Silky Merino:

I haven't yet decided what to make with these but would love to figure out a cardigan, maybe Tempest but in one color.

Here are the Ravelry links: Muir, Laminaria, Swallowtail Shawl, Tempest.

Playing with my stash

The funny thing about the knitting/fishing couple is that the two interests are relatively compatible. This week, I received a big box of yarn, and my husband received a big box of fishing stuff (hooks, lures, bait etc.)!  Even the costs seem to be relatively similar, although we haven't done a direct comparison.  Believe me, my husband is ecstatic that I've taken up knitting because it means that I don't complain when he disappears for hours on end on the lake (I am happily at home or at shore, or in some cases, on the boat with him, knitting).  Nor do I complain when our tv is set to the fishing channel for hours on end - when I really can't take it, I watch or listen to something off my computer, while knitting!  Fishing does slow down in the winter, at least on the east coast, but there's always the aforementioned fishing channel, and plenty of research and shopping online in preparation for the next season.  At least we both have our obsessions, although he has yet to start a fishing blog and I don't think there's a ravelry for fishing... yet!  I'm sure there are sites where people post pictures of their catch but I can't say I've gone looking...

We even share some of the same accessories.  Well, not share exactly, as in at the same time, but I have a nice fishing tackle box and some cute little boxes for some of my knitting accessories.

I also recently "lent" him some of my plastic yarn containers to hold all his plastic worms (don't ask) which were hitherto spread all over our living room floor.  Kind of like my yarn is now - I need those boxes back!

Speaking of which, well, yes, I've bought a lot of yarn lately.  Here are my stats for August (running net total, with total for the month in parentheses):

skeins purchased: 276 (17)  

skeins knit: 112 (2.5) 

yards purchased: 46,107 (5,795) 

yards knit: 17,125 (439) 

yards remaining: 28.083

$ spent on yarn (not including sales tax or shipping): $542.40 (eek!)

knitting since: 1/27/07

Yards knit is pretty low for me - I spent too much time shopping!  And it's the most $ spent and yards purchased in a month so far... but not by much.

$ spent does include my first Sundara subscription payment for yarn I have not received yet (so is therefore not counted in my stash) and it does include my Madtosh orders which I have not yet received.  I've already counted that yardage though because, well, it's not going to get any better this month because well um yes cough splutter I have been trying my hand at purchasing yarn off the ravelry boards.  And succeeding!  Or failing... to keep to a budget.  But let's look at the positive shall we?!

Lurking around and frequently refreshing on ravelry to keep an eye on ISO (in search of) and destashing threads does pay off.  On Monday, I managed to snap up a skein of Mama Blue sock yarn which was very exciting as I have never even been close to obtaining this yarn.  I was also approached by a super nice ravelry user who saw my name on the "ISO list" and offered to sell me a skein of toasted orange over pistachio sock yarn that I have been seriously coveting for my giraffe project and also for general gorgeousness but had pretty much given up upon.  I can't tell you how happy I was!!!  I picked it up from the post office yesterday and oh my.

 

Why yes I did open it on the way home from the post office!

 

Doesn't it look great with my citrus zinger?

So of course now I am torn between a) starting a Little Giraffe right away b) waiting until my MadTosh arrives to see how those colors look and c) saving this beautiful yarn for something more "worthy" than a stuffed toy.  Neither color are exactly "wardrobe colors" for me but I think I'll wait for the MadTosh (where are they?!!!) to decide for sure.

This is kind of my dilemma with Sundara in general - there are many more colors that I love than there are colors that I'd like clothing or accessories in, but I really want all the colors that I love!  A given skein can be so pretty as an object in and of itself that is so hard to resist... but there's only so much yarn one can justify buying just because it's pretty!  The latest announcement about the new collections that are coming out has me even more confused and I think I'm getting a little carried away by the scarcity frenzy.  I'm keeping my four Seasons subscription and that should give me more than enough yarn, but then something like toasted orange over pistachio arrives on my doorstep and is so stunningly gorgeous that I just want more.  It's not easy, this endless cycle of self-restraint and gluttony!

That's not all - gluttony won over yesterday when I found myself purchasing not one but two separate skeins of Sundara Silk Lace... this after declaring myself officially "off lace" for a while following all my recent lace projects!  They were for sale on the ravelry boards and so rarely do a) people want to sell rather than trade for other Sundara and b) I see their posts within minutes so I stand half a chance of getting them that I just couldn't resist.  One is grey over pink which was a limited edition (I could only find a photo of the colorway in aran silky merino) and the other is mahogany over marmalade, the latest Autumn silk lace shipment (to those who were subscribed earlier this year ie not me!)  

Yeah, so much for a yarn budget!

I think it's about time I knit a lace project for myself though, don't you think?!

I'm determined to do more knitting this month because shopping is fun but... not quite as relaxing.  I have been working on the trellis baby blanket and it is coming along great, so I do feel I have my "knitting mojo" back.  It's the first time since my recent deadline knitting that I've felt truly addicted and enthralled and I am enjoying every minute of it.  I'll post photos soon.

In the meantime, I'm also going through my stash and assigning projects to it where I can so I can get a better handle of where I am.  Ravelry isn't quite set up yet to create such a list so I've started a page here on the blog for it, although it's mostly for my reference, so there are no links or anything.  So now when I feel like "shopping" I can look through my queue or other patterns to see if I can assign more of my stash to projects!  My first pass already reminded me of some leftovers from various projects that I could use to knit hats or blanket squares for the Stash and Burn 7 Long project (see episode 58).

I'm looking forward to more queue organization in ravelry though, so I can sort between "am definitely knitting soon", "would like to knit someday" and "just want to bookmark for now" projects.  It would be great to be able to link yarn to projects before "casting on" too...

Home delivery!

I was working from home today and hubby was home sick... imagine our surprise when the doorbell rang at 8am. Usually we're both out of the house by then but this morning it felt very early.

Turns out it was the Con Ed lady to read the meter!!!  

But then, imagine our further surprise when the doorbell rang again at 8.30am.

My husband turned to me and said "yarn delivery?"

How did he know?!

How beautiful is this yarn?  Absolutely gorgeous, that's how!!!  It's kind of silly, but I always like it when all my yarn in a purchase looks good together, even if they're for separate projects.  I've been carrying this yarn around with me all day and petting it, it is so soft and pretty.  I haven't knit with it yet but so far I have to say, I am not disappointed.  In fact, I am getting more and more addicted, as anyone who has me on their friend's activity on Ravelry may have noticed when I favorited about six hundred thousand Sundara sock yarns from other people's stashes...

Of course the question that has been on my mind is, what am I going to knit with this lovely yarn to do it justice?

I adore the bright yellow-orange (citrus zinger) - it was my first choice of what I wanted from this update, but I was drawn to the other yellows too.  However, it's not the greatest color for me (or really for most people) in terms of clothing, apart from socks of course, but I'm not much of a sock knitter.  I think I could become one but it's not why I bought this yarn.  It's something I've noticed though, that I fall in love with a much wider range of colors than I would actually wear, especially sock yarns, but I guess that's precisely why there are a lot more colors for sock yarns than other yarns.

Anyway, I'm not sure if this is sacrilegious but... I'm thinking stuffed toys!  Don't you think they would really brighten up a nursery?  I can't quite decide which one yet... maybe Sheldon (ravelry, pattern), Elefante (ravelry, pattern), Elijah (ravelry, pattern), Little Giraffe (ravelry, pattern) or Sock Giraffe (ravelry, pattern).  Maybe with some green highlights from the lemon lime, even though I hadn't really planned on using them together.  By the way yes, the lemon lime is actually more green than it looks on the Sundara website, which I am happy about, and actually, I have kind of fallen Shetland Shorty (ravelry, pattern) for the lemon lime, although I'm not sure if I have enough (or any?) outfits that would go with it... nor do I typically wear shrugs.  It's such a pretty pattern though, and I think I have just enough yarn for it.  Otherwise, I wish I had 2 skeins so I could make a tank.  This cowl would be great too.

I've also become kind of obsessed with baby hoodies.  I love hoodies in general although they are a little awkward under a coat (and NYC doesn't have a long enough spring or fall for there to much time for sweaters without coats).  Look at these cute baby hoodies though: Cardigan for Merry (ravelry, pattern, flickr), Debbie Bliss Duffle Coat (ravelry, flickr).

So much knitting, so little time!

Yowsa!

Wow, that was absolutely the craziest thing ever.  Remember how I was marveling at competitive yarn buying?  That was nothing!  

I've known about Sundara for a while now but every time I went to her site there was nothing for sale and I figured oh well.  Then brooklyntweed wrote about his Sundara Spiral Yoke Pullover and I thought hmmm, I really need to figure out what this is all about.

This time, the new website had more info, plus some searching around on Ravelry lead me to... well, go at your own risk, the Sundara Yarn Love and the Seasons Yarn Club groups and it was all downhill (or uphill) from there.  Ordering one season was a pretty easy decision, but then I found this thread with images of last year's seasons collection (here are the flickr links for spring, summer, autumn and winter for those not on Ravelry).  So totally and utterly pretty!  That, in addition to browsing around the forums and observing the fanatic love for this yarn (I mean look at this or here on flickr) and the extreme difficulty in obtaining it, lead me to, um, cough, well, yes, shhhhh.... I signed up for all three other seasons!!!  I was in particular not expecting to love winter, but in the end I decided that only in getting all four would I avoid any regret, even though I have never actually seen any of this yarn in person!!!  Also, it's within my yarn budget (yes I have a yarn budget, instituted just recently) but only just... and only if I really don't buy much of anything else in the next 8 months, which is completely unrealistic, but I am going to try and restrain myself from doing any more "collecting" and only buy yarn if I have a specific project in mind, at least during the subscription.

Except, of course, for today... I work from home on Tuesdays so when I saw the update hadn't gone up yesterday, I started stalking the site when I got home last night, and hanging out on the gigantic update thread (I won't bother linking to it - it has over 1,000 messages, most of them not particularly interesting if you are reading them after the fact, but it was a lot of fun while it was going on including side discussions on, amongst other things, the olympics and The Closer).  There was no update last night so... I figured I'd try my hand at it today.  I've never even been around for an update before but today, whaddya know...

 

..."out to lunch"!!

This "out to lunch" screen indicates that the update will be posted soon, and this is also the point at which crazed Sundara stalkers the world over starting hitting F5 like crazy people (except if you're on a mac in which case it's apple-r).  So I was apple-r-ing away and at the same time giggling hysterically because I mean, seriously?!!!  Totally crazy!  The site kept going down with a variety of error messages and people would occasionally risk a few precious seconds away from the website to post on Ravelry... thank goodness for that chatter so I a) knew I wasn't the only crazy one and b) was encouraged not to give up and c) it made it fun.

Then, gasp, after at least half an hour of "out to lunch", possibly more, I forget, the yarn seemed to be up.  I had different tabs set up in one window with the different yarns I was interested in so I started reloading them, selecting the quantity and hitting purchase... only to still get error messages.

The extreme level of fanaticism on Ravelry along with helpful tips from veterans lead me to persevere... I knew it was going to be hard and very competitive, and I was prepared to both stick it out and be disappointed.  Thank goodness I was home because I could never have done this at work and would never have even attempted it.  

So I kept refreshing on various tabs, while trying not to have too many refreshes going at once to overload my connection.  I was not getting through to an actual shopping cart but I could tell from the updates on the Ravelry thread that not many others were either... so I kept going until...

 

...progress!  

I'd heard that it's better to avoid paypal and just try by credit card, but neither link worked for a while so I just kept hitting both until one worked, which happened to be paypal.  I'd also heard that it's better to just focus on one colorway and getting that through so that's what I did, although I did try other yarns in between.

After a few tries, I was able to get through to paypal, lost a few precious seconds because my phone number was not saved into my paypal profile, then back to the Sundara site but still, it wasn't over yet, I still had to confirm my order...

Several tries failed until finally, there was a long pause (by this point I am muttering "pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease" under my breath and looking heavenwards) and then...

...success!!!

OMG wow.  I scored 2 skeins of limited edition Citrus Zinger Sock!!!! (I'm not sure how long that page will be up as limited editions come down after the update.) I was so happy, it was what I really wanted.   I'm not sure why, but it really captured my imagination.  I don't think I've ever even owned any yellow yarn before, and it's not like it's a particular favorite, but this just looked so lovely and sunny and happy, and I have a very special project in mind for it, which I will detail further when I have it worked out a bit more.

By the way, I was warned that limited edition yarns are almost impossible to get, but I figured yellow is not that popular a color, and there wasn't much buzz about it on the Ravelry thread, so I decided to give it a go.  Plus I dreamt about it, yes that is how obsessed I have become.  My dream was highly specific - in it I woke up and the update was happening so I put Citrus Zinger in my shopping basket, considered checking out but got greedy and added Spruce over Sage, only to have both disappear so I went for Daffodil instead and managed to get it!!!  That was how I decided to go after just one colorway but after I was done, well, I decided to keep trying and... I also managed to get 1 skein of limited edition Lemon Lime Fingering Silky Merino.  I didn't even try for Spruce over Sage, even though I really liked it as that seemed pretty popular on the thread.  I almost got Thriller as well but it disappeared before I could confirm the order.  

So yes, that was absolutely the craziest and most ridiculous thing I ever did for yarn.  I'm not sure I would try again with such persistence - is this yarn really so much better than other more readily available yarns?  Probably not, at least not proportional to the effort required, but I couldn't resist the challenge and I would like to think I would have had fun no matter what.  Unfortunately many who did not score are bitterly disappointed, which I understand (I'm not sure "fun no matter what" would have held had it been my third or fourth unsuccessful try), but I feel bad for them being so upset, and slightly guilty for having scored twice, even though, well, I think I was relatively restrained, and all is fair in love and yarn stalking, no?!!!  

But anyway, all I can say either way is... YIPPEEE!!!!!