Knitting In Public

I missed out on natural daylight today to photograph some FO’s for my Ravelry notebook. I hope to get some taken tomorrow.

In my regular rounds of various blogs, I came across the Lime ‘n’ Violet “Chore Wars.” Why am I such a joiner? Apparently the site was started for folks actually doing household chores, and using this game-like site to encourage family members to compete and get the chores done while having some fun. Lime ‘n’ Violet have set up a group within the Chore Wars that has “adventures” for knitters, crocheters, and spinners. Some adventures apply to just one sub-group, and others apply to everyone. You receive experience points and gold and things like that for each completed adventure, which in this sub-group are fiber related tasks only - no household chores!

I joined on Thursday, which was a good choice as I had lots of points awarded for my activities that day, which included knitting with a group, knitting in public, knitting for an hour, etc. I started at #1208, and after Thursday’s activities, I had already moved up the ranks to #928. Today, I added some more activities, and am now #894! This is all for fun, although they suggested you could do with it as you will - for example, one of them is using the gold awarded for various knitting activities and ‘exchanging’ them one-for-one for real dollars used for yarn purchases (a way to control her yarn spending, as she has to do some knitting to earn the gold in the game). Of course, you can’t exchange points for real dollars from anyone or anywhere - this is just a little way for her to use the game with herself.

I’ve signed up for another lace KAL, MysticLight. This is designed and run by Anna, who did the MysticWaters KAL. While I have not finished that shawl, I do love how the pattern worked out and am anxious to try another KAL with Anna. I will finish the Mystic Waters, but of course it’s now on the back burner as I work on other things that have caught my eye. There’s still time to sign up for the KAL, it doesn’t start until March 26. This shawl will be knit with fingering weight yarn. Anna has plans to do a shawl KAL for each of the elements. She’s done water, of course, and has explained that MysticLight is really fire, so there’s been quite the quest to find the “perfect” yarn. I immediately thought of a variety of sock yarns I could use that were flame colored, including several that were multi-colored. Then two things occurred to me: often multicolored yarn pools and does funny stuff and I think it often distracts you from the pattern (I sure don’t want to spend time knitting lace to have the pattern disappear into the yarn coloring), and that while I find many of those colorways very attractive, I would not be likely to wear them. I asked AJ (since she works in a yarn store and is far more familiar with many yarns than I am) if she knew of a yarn that wouldn’t pool. She made the suggestion of Dream In Color’s Smooshy. Supposedly dyed so that it will not pool or stripe. In the group discussions for MysticLight, several people are going off in different interpretations of “light” - and one suggested Aurora Borealis. This appealed to me as the colors are more my ’style.’ The Smooshy yarns have a color they call “Dusky Aurora” — so that is what I’ve decided to use for the KAL. Here’s a photo of my two skeins:

It really is a lot darker than it looks here. Their website showed a little bit of other colors in there, but I don’t see them in my skeins. I’m still happy with the color and I’m sure I’ll wear the shawl.

I ordered the skeins from Simply Socks, and while they practically broke the sound barrier getting the yarn to me, I think it has a fairly strong perfumy/mothbally smell. Not pleasant. Most fiber folks are so careful to keep yarns for sale out of environments that pick up questionable/objectionable smells (pets, smoking) that I was surprised this smells so bad. Apparently, I’m the only one that thinks it stinks, however. Others have given the skeins a sniff at my request (I know, it’s weird) and while they can smell something, they don’t think it’s so bad. Oh well. I have the skeins “airing” now, and since the KAL doesn’t start until  next month, the yarn will hopefully lose that scent by then.

Wedding plans progress - I have several contracts to sign and return. Still lots of details to take care of, but the major decisions and major players have been determined. This is a great, albeit temporary, relief!

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 23rd, 2008 at 7:24 pm and is filed under MysticLight, wedding, Lace. 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.