http://stores.ebay.co.uk/benlyndalle/
I bought 30 balls of yarn in total for a reasonably good price. 10 balls of a gorgeous purple and 20 balls of mixed colours. The lady who sells this made me up a special mix of colours since I did not want some of her mixes and she seemed nice even before I bought off her. Anyway the sale was done and I pretty much forgot about it for a week due to life as usual. Then I realised it had been a while and when I checked the estimated arrival day on ebay it had already passed a couple of days earlier. No wool had arrived so I contacted her. She was surprised it had not come and sent me a photo of the proof of postage. At this point I got concerned. I left it a few more days and nothing came. Then I rang the enquires number for the Royal Mail. They said to try going to the delivery office and see if any parcels were unclaimed. Normally if you are not in they leave a card but I reasoned that maybe it had somehow gone missing or been lost. The delivery office did not have it despite my seller having sent it in a pink bag with white polka dots so would be a pretty distinctive parcel.
Two days later she refunded me. This was the friday and it had been three weeks since I ordered the yarn. On Saturday I was decorating our stairs and landing with my partner. It was a nightmare project. Well still has yet to be finished. We stripped off this 1950s or 1960s paper which had been badly patched with different types of paper when the house was rewired probably in the 1980s and then painted. And then repainted. It was a mess. Infact had I thought about it I should have shown it here as a before and after project because it is unrecogniseable now from the mess we moved into. I may have to post a picture or two later once we have finished even though the overall project can not really be shown now. Its still not quite done but will be finished soon.
Back to my yarn. Here I am all covered in wallpaper paste and muck and there is a knock on the door and a lady is standing there holding my parcel of knitting yarn. Apparently it was delivered to her house which has the same address but a different postcode because it is in a different village!
Imagine my surprise! How useless is the local postman too to deliver my parcel to the wrong village. Well I was so happy because my seller had already informed me she had run out of the purple yarn I had wanted so much and was unsure if she can get any more of it. I thanked her and she went, after having asked me what I was intending to make from it. Then I emailed the seller to let her know and get an invoice to repay her. I was really quite surprised when she emailed back and said I could keep it as a "freebie" for being so honest. How lovely is that really? Makes you believe there are really some very nice people out there. The first lady returned my lost parcel, the second gave it me as a present. I am still overwelmed by this niceness. It restores my faith in humanity for want of a better expression. And this is what I got:
And as you can see my seller even attached a hand written note to me when she posted this long before any of this happened. What a lovely touch!
ANYWAY, after my half-way make of the Lime fluffy stripey cardigan
I decided this time to stop playing around and wasting good yarn and do a proper pattern rather than making it up as I go along which can work really well but recently has not made me any very good garments so:
The yarn detailed above had yet to arrive and I needed to start a new knitting project.
I decided I need to do a proper knitting pattern. In the proper gauge. I have had this particular pattern since 1983 or 1984 and never got round to knitting it. Anyway until starting it I never realised just how EASY this pattern really is because its all knitted in GARTER stitch. I am really not used to doing this at all. The last time I knitted in garter stitch was my very first jumper at age 16.So this is the pattern:
A close up of each page:
The black in this pattern is double knitting wool used double but I am doing it all in mohair type instead - my first deviation from the correct pattern but one I think will not matter since the gauge is still the same. Anyway a while ago now I bought this mohair yarn from the loveknitting site.
http://www.loveknitting.com/
When you buy off these people they send you the yarn in these lovely organza bags. I never thought too much about it at the start and just added it to my stash. Now I have decided to knit it up I am finding the organza bags brilliant for keeping the yarn clean and contained. The thing with knitting is you can do it "in between". So maybe carry it to work and do it during your lunch time, or take it to a friends house or on a bus or train etc. I tend to knit at night, while the TV is on, with one or both dogs trying to be as close as possible. This is obviously not a good thing at all for any yarn let alone a fluffy one which tends to pick up things like dog hair. I think even when I have finished with knitting this I am going to continue using these organza bags to keep currently-knitting yarns clean because they work fantastically for this. Also if the door bell goes or the phone rings and I need to move it stops it getting tangled around dog legs that keep moving all the time it seems.
I picked these colours:
And here is my knitting so far:
The pattern is shaped as you can see as you go along and is pretty easy to do so far at least. My only worry is there is too little shade differentiation, as in light and dark rather than hue between my cyclamen, blue, purple and green and then I have this really light blue in there. Still it may look fine when finished and is a particularly light weight mohair type of fuffy yarn which is going to make a lovely spring/summer jumper. That is assuming I get it finished this year but I am hoping by my
posting on here it is more likely I will keep knitting and finish this.
Or finish reasonably soon anyway.
The lightness in weight and the transparency is yet another reaosn why I decided against doing this mixed with a normal DK yarn. The 1980s mohair was, I am positive, much thicker but knitted on the same needles because I still have one survivor from this period and it is even after around 30 years of wear thicker than this stuff I am knitting with now. I am knitting on the correct needles for the yarn and for the pattern but still it seems a bit lightweight to the mohair I used in the 1980s. But I will continue.
The only change I might make is to do the same pattern front and back because I am not too sure about the different sides but will decide about that later depending on yarn quantities available for the second side etc. I may simply have to do it as the pattern due to not having enough of a colour otherwise.
And finally here it is kept nice and clean in my lovely organza bag:
Thank you for reading and hope to see you back here again soon,
Bracken
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