St Brigid: December 2005 Archives

The past couple weeks have been great -- busy, lots of family and friends, and some plain ol hanging out and knitting. I hope you all had wonderful holidays. It seems that I'm quite predictable this time of year. Looking back on my postings last December I see I didn't post for two weeks around Christmas last year as well. Guess I'm more of a creature of habit than I'd like to admit.

Christmas did bring a few new knitting things (including one really special one). Maybe you'll be able to pick it out:

I have had countless copies of Aran Knitting on my watch list on eBay for well over a year. I had set a price ceilling that was quite unreasonable and I knew I'd never actually get a copy -- on my own.

I've never actually seen a copy in person. I know I could have gotten a copy from a library, but I sorta enjoyed the waiting.

Now that I've gotten a chance to look through the book I know what all the fuss is about. The first few chapters are chock full of history. Reading through I've learned how the aran evolved and why it was created. Reading those chapters gave me just the boost I needed to do this:

Yup, I've cast on (yet again) for St Brigid. I've actually cast on twice this past week (there's more of that habit again. Christy I know you're laughing right now). I started out with Black Water Abbey yarn in Moss(the bottom one). I love the yarn. The depth of color cannot be beat. But, even knit on US 5 it was still a bigger than what the pattern called for. After a full repeat I admitted to myself that the yarn was just not right (Mary Beth you were SO right!).

So I headed down to Rosie's yesterday and found a beautiful shade of Araucania. My mom (not a knitter) says it looks like velvet. The shadings in this batch are quite subtle. The cables are popping beautifully. Araucania is a little lighter weight so I went with US 6s instead of 7s. I'm knitting the larger size and it's coming out somewhere between the two -- just what I was hoping for.

Now if you'll excuse me it's time for me to get back to my Christmas knitting.