Something New!

Armed with my decision to rid myself of those annoying single and '+1' balls of yarn, I went home last night and opened the Pandora's boxes I call a stash. It's not that bad, really, I'm just being dramatic. Anyway, I pulled out all the yarn I want to get rid of and then went through my books. I have all these really lovely books, some of which I've never used for a project. FOR SHAME! From those books, I wrote down the patterns I love, some with interesting construction and some with techniques I haven't tried or would like to perfect and am now in the process of cross pollinating yarn to project. As we all know, however, it always doesn't work out perfectly. With some of the book patterns I just don't have the right yarn on hand. But between my Rav queue my list, I think I have more than enough pattern choices to make use of the 20ish yarns I pulled.

I'm really excited to start these projects. I think I've even decided what I'm going to make first. I'm going tackle a technique I've never done before. Knitting with beads. My choice of pattern is the Kim Hargreaves Flicker hat to be knitted in Berroco Ultra Alcapa Lite. My sister is an expert on bead knitting [she just recently completed the Shipwreck Shawl in which she used 4000+ beads]. She'll be an invaluable resource if I run into trouble.

And speaking of my invaluable sister, look at what she sent me for my birthday! My own labels! She had handmade me some for Christmas, which were super cool, but these take the ice cream and cake and cake! Ice cream and cake do the ice cream and cake!!!! I'm sooooo excited to use them! I feel like I've officially arrived as a knitter!