Inspiration At Last!

My monthly knitting group met last week and enjoyed catching up since our last time together. Jennifer showed off her Baa-ble Hat and thrummed mittens she knit with her handspun. (The crazy lizard background is a mural at the Mexican restaurant where we meet).

Her pom pom was expertly done.

The snowy background of the sky was perfect for thrumming. Now I'm inspired to knit them for myself. I will, however, need to find a substitute yarn for the sky as I used up all my blue Studio Donegal Irish Tweed yarn on the hat.

Then on Friday, Jen1 and I had an impromptu afternoon together, going for lunch and shopping at two local yarn shops, Myrtle Station Wool (open Thursday - Saturday, 11 - 5) and Knit Kabin.

Here's my loot - 3 skeins of Sandesgarn Fantasy yarn to make the Pfeilraupe shawl - currently the #1 pattern on Ravelry. And it's free! And a skein of yummy indigodragonfly MerGoat sock yarn in the Oooo...Shiny colourway.

The Knitting Socks from Around the World book was a treat from Jen1. Then we went back to Jen's for tea and to catch up on everything since we last got together at the knitting retreat last November.

Last week, Skip and I went to the Sail store in Oshawa, hoping to find some bargains. I found a short-sleeved white Columbia SPF shirt in the clearance section (yippee!) which will be perfect for our winter holiday in the south. While there, I encountered a display of Dale of Norway sweaters, headbands, and hats.

Calgary sweater

Kongsvollen headband

Vail beanie

Skip mentioned that a hat to match his St. Moritz sweater would be nice. I had enough yarn left over to make it except for the charcoal grey which is the now-discontinued KnitPicks Telemark yarn. I tried a similar colour with doubled fingering weight. The weight was pretty good but it was just too dark with adjacent black stitches. I dug out some Peer Gynt grey in a much lighter shade. It's a wee bit thicker and a bit fuzzier but I like the look of it. So the hat won't exactly match the sweater.

St Moritz

St Moritz headband in progress

To make it look even more authentic, I ordered another Dale of Norway St.Moritz patch on ebay to sew onto it.

It has an interior ear band but I'm also going to line it with fleece to make it extra soft on Skip's forehead.

I discovered Dale yarns have two others the same weight as the Heilo I'm using for this project. Heilo is 100% wool, Falk is 100% superwash wool, and Hauk is treated with Teflon and is rain and snow-resistant. All three yarns are the exact same weight and interchangeable for these patterns.

Finally, I just discovered a nifty website that outlines substitutes for discontinued yarns called Yarnsub.com. This is very handy when trying to match yarns in your stash to yarns required for a particular pattern. You just plug in the yarn you need substituted and a bunch of comparable yarns are listed, each with its comparison criteria.