Me and the boy were at Loch Lomond this weekend so not much knitting content.
I bought some stunning yarn online that I can neither photograph, nor rave about as the intended recipient is a reader of my blog.
I do have a couple of questions though - if a DK yarn is doubled up is it then an aran weight? If the suggested needle size is 3.75 for the DK is there a formula for knowing what the suggested needle size of 2 strands of DK? Or do I need to gauge and stop trying to find the lazy route out?
So I did do a bit of ballwinding as it arrived in 3 skeins - 350 yards per skein! I really really need a swift [hint hint!] as, although my ball winder has been described by a member of Glasgow Stitch n Bitch as the 'Rolls Royce of ballwinders', it is still sometimes hard going.
The problem is that a device such as a ball winder makes me want to go fast, but sitting with an opened out skein on my knees and winding from there forces a slow progress. Any attempt at speeding up results in the start of a tangle - especially with the fibre blend of this particular yarn for some reason!
It's hard going - the tangling of yarn, the slowness of winding, and the precarious-ness of the opened out skein on my knees, combined with a cat getting ready to pounce on my knees ... All of these make me want to grab the yarn and yank at the tangle, boot the cat and scream a murderous rage ... and yet I must sit there still, breathing deeply and calm myself. To do anything else will only worsen the situation.
And the closer I get to the end [as with nearing the final rows of a project] the faster I begin to wind - the tangling begins ... reign it in ... Slow down... 1 skein down, 2 to go.
No baking this week but a homemade cake none-the-less. This is a cherry cake from the Farmer's Market at Loch Lomond - we also got some Aberdeen Angus Beef burgers [Well Bred, Well Fed and Well Hung according to the logo!] and some Salmon.
Having a stall of my own has made me realise the importance of buying locally and supporting the community.
A view from the edge of the Farmer's Market, next to the Loch Lomond Aquarium [picture above of some jelly fish]. The Aquarium was fantastic - especially the otters. There's Mona, Rona and Shona [mum and 2 babes]. I was pretty indifferent to otters before - the boy once took me to the otter viewing park in Skye - over an hour in a chilly hut watching waves ... no otter was sighted and I took it personally.
Seeing them romp about up close and personal was amazing - they're so cute! Like wet kittens - they can open monkey nuts with their bare hands too.
The aquarium itself was one of the best I've been to - the displays, colour and lighting had all been so carefully thought out to give maximum impact. The Finding Nemo Kingdom was brilliant and there was a baby sting ray in with the sea horses - only born the day previous.
And that was my weekend. A day off yesterday to work on crafty stall stuff means my post is a day late.
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1 comment:
What a wonderful weekend you've had; I just *love* aquariams (should that be aquaria?) and got very excited seeing the picture at the beginning of the post. Did they have any skate/rays? I could watch those for hours!
As for doubling DK yarn, be warned, it will come up at chunky weight, if not even larger. When I first got hooked on knitting I decided to make my sister a sweater from a pattern for chunky yarn. The colours weren't advenurous enough for me, so I decided to blend my own by using 2 strands of contrasting DKs for some of the stripes. It came out ENORMOUS. Now some of this was a tension problem, but my Ma (who ended up doing a cut and sew job on it!) insisted that the stripes knitted in the chunky yarn wre smaller than those in 2 ends of DK. Incidentally, even after Ma's drastic intervention the pullover swamped my sister, so she passed it on to her boyfriend. The "boyfriend sweater curse" clearly doesn't apply when siblings are involved in the making as, 25 years since I made the sweater, the couple are still together. (Less sure about the garment!)
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