You Probably Didn't Think that I was This Classy

Remember that birthday yarn binge I mentioned? The worst of it involved getting very, very Classy. I ordered blue Dream in Color's Classy from the Loopy Ewe for a February Lady Sweater on the Friday before my birthday, knowing full well that I wouldn't have it in time for the weekend. Since I stayed in the city overnight, on Sunday morning I went to a few Seattle yarn stores that I don't get to frequently enough, and ended up with another sweater's worth of Classy at the Fiber Gallery. I swatched on Sunday, and started Laura Chau's Lucy in the Sky cardigan the next day. I really like the way it looks so far, and love the feel of the yarn. Like Smooshy, it's sock-weight counterpart, this yarn is very smooshy and springy. The fronts, back, and button bands are worked at the same time, so the rows are really really long and the progress feels slow, but it will be really nice not to have a lot of seams to deal with at the end. I love the seed stitch borders, and I like that there isn't any pesky waist shaping in this sweater. I've been trying to alternate between this and the Green Chill sleeves, and yesterday I worked on the Blue Birthday socks and Blue Sea Socks in addition to both sweaters, but really it's the Black Diamond that's getting the bulk of my attention.

The yarn for the February Lady sweater arrived later in the week, and it's really pretty. The color is Midnight Derby, which is a dark, purpley blue. It's a little less dark that I expected, but that's probably because there's so much variation between batches of this yarn. Here's how it looks:

Pretty! But now sealed in a space bag in the garage, along with a lot of other yarn, in an effort to get the sewing room under control. This should also keep me from casting on a new sweater when I've got another one barely started and one very close to completion. I'm completely cool with 2009 being the year of the sweater, but I'd rather that it didn't turn into (another) year of starting and then abandoning sweaters.

Sock Summit News

Just as I was seriously considering signing up for another sock yarn club, the new Sock Summit website went up. Class listings, prices, and some non-class event info is up, and it's really going to be an incredible event. There isn't enough info yet to select classes and slot them into my own schedule, but it's enough to do some bare-bones planning & budgeting. Budget item #1: stop buying yarn until registration in May. You don't need it. That goes for patterns that you don't need immediately to start a project, too.* Budget item #2: watch other discretionary spending, too. It can't hurt.

Sock Book News

Cookie A's new book Sock Innovation arrived in the mail on Friday. It's really great--the first section talks about how she designs, and there are a ton of patterns. You can preview (and then immediately queue) the patterns in the book on Ravelry. The first pattern I'm going to knit is Kai-Mei, and I set aside this yarn for it yesterday when I was vaccuum packing yarn. Cookie is teaching at Sock Summit, and her class is high on my priority list. Although I should admit that right now the list is very non-hierarchical--it's basically just "classes I want to take" and "classes that I've already taken or that involve spinning".

Time to get cracking--I want to do more work in the sewing room, because I had an idea yesterday for a new project bag that I'd like to prototype!

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* exclusions apply, particularly if I get really stressed out. Wollmeise is always a free pass, as is yarn purchased with my Christmas gift card from Renaissance, and yarn that I've already committed to purchase (final Sundara seasons shipment, and next Loopy sock club).