Black Dog

This one brought a beautiful day, with clear skies and sunshine. A beautiful day along the river. And time to get out and about. And I did…….lovely morning for a walk on the Riverwalk.

I broke my string of four days off in a row without any contact with the shop, but I had at least two good reasons. First off, I had to drop off change and a bank instrument, and second our UPS delivery guy and I spoke this morning and he had a big delivery for us today, including some stuff I was waiting for.

(which comes with a long story that I’ll share over at my other blog, shortly). In the mean time, there were lots of goodies in the shipment (chronicled over at the NEW ARRIVALS blog for ThreadBear. Yes, our UPS guy Ben is a cutie-pie, but even better he’s a good guy and REALLY funny. Always good for a joke or two, and he takes teasing quite well, too. And he gets it from me, from Sabrina, and from staff. All in good fun.

This weekend was a holiday knitting kickoff party at the shop, as Sunday was the 25th of October–two months until Christmas (even less before Chanukkah!). So I fired up the trusty red mixer

and baked a ton of stuff, from cookies to bars and more, plus made some spiced cider (kinda like non-alcoholic wassail).

my famous peanut butter kiss cookies. YUM! They turned out great, so I was told, and I love that simple recipe!

I did get some sock knitting time recently, and finished my Meilenweit Merino Print 2110 sock

and it hangs by the yarn at the shop. So I now have a new “dum-dum knitting” sock on the needles

in “plain vanilla” pattern (stockinette) using Jarbo Raggi in one of the holiday-themed shades we received recently. It’s coming along QUICKLY as it’s aran-weight yarn (70% merino superwash, 30% nylon) and knits up on US 6 or 7 (4mm or 4.5mm) needles. FAST! And cute.

A big delivery of something JUST FOR ME came in today

that’s going to be turned into a sweater for me…..all me……

it’s a simple pullover from Melissa Leapman’s (older) book called “A Close-Knit Family”. I like it alot, and it’s just simple stockinette, but the yarn makes the difference, as it’s a handspun fiber from the Black Forest of Germany, called Naturwolle. LOVELY stuff, and amazng color. I’m looking at the options for the accent color, and my friend Kirsten (owner of the US distributorship) chose these for me

I like the black the best, and I like the idea of the green with the black for accent. Just now, however, I’m reviewing the colourway options and I think the black is now the body of the garment and the purple/fuchsia is now the accent color. I called the distributor in the Bay Area and they have ten hanks of the black tweed on hand, so I’ve asked for it to be sent Priority Mail so I can get busy busy on this sweater ASAP (I can work on the two skeins for starters, but they won’t last long, as it’s big needles…..). There’s a story on the garment (again, over to my personal blog, later today, for that tale).

That’s about it for now…..over to populate the other two blogs I referenced above……

Bad news……they just called and there’s not enough of the black in the warehouse…..so that will have to be for another sweater project, another day. Maybe something I can design for myself…… The black is a little somber, and (according to my Grandmother–a long story) this is not to be a somber project.

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