Saturday, September 22, 2007

Another weekly dishcloth topic (i.e. Alison tries to resume blogging)

Well, I'm still here :). It's been a hectic week at work since getting back from SF, and I just haven't had the energy to blog. But since both KT and my SIL have updated their blogs a couple of times since I've been back, I feel guilty. And I want to get an entry into the dishcloth swap group for a prize at the end of the swap, so I figured I should answer the question of the week:

When you knit or crochet dishclothes, washclothes or face clothes, what do you use? What size needle or hook? Wood? what type? Metal? Plastic? A specific Brand? Why do you love that needle or hook so much? Is there one you are dying to try? Is there a particular yarn you love and use all the time for clothes? What is so special about it?

Well, since I still haven't made a dishcloth (I am playing with possible patterns for my swappee, but haven't done a full cloth yet), this is hard to answer. In general I am very happy with my metal knitpicks options interchangable circular needles. It's so convenient, having them all in one place. I got some extra 40" cables to make magic looping easier. They only go down to size 4, though, so I got some of their regular circs in smaller sizes. I like the smooth metal, the nice sharp points (except when I have to use my finger to help things along - ouch!), and the very flexible cables. I did see that Knitpicks has a new line of wooden tips for the interchangables, and I am intrigued, but until I have a reason to switch to woodens, I will probably stick with the metal ones.

As far as yarns, I don't have any hands-down favorites yet. I've been knitting up some baby booties for a friend's twins with baby cashmerino, and it's pretty nice! Unfotunately, I finished the boy's set (blue with coral pink designs) on the airplane on the way back from SF. I went to start the girl's set (supposed to be the same colors but reversed) and can't find the blue yarn! I am afraid when I cast off and cut the blue, the ball went under the seat of the plane :(. Oh well, it's not an uncommon brand - time to hit a yarn store!

SF was great - we walked and bus'd all over the place (the Nextbus system, which Andy actually wrote the code for when we lived in Berkeley, was a great help). Ate some yummy food, found a slew of geocaches... and of course I went to two yarn stores. My favorite was Imagiknit. I thought of KT as I perused the whole room of floor-to-ceiling non-wool yarns!

I woke up early this morning wanting to knit (and then nap later on); discovered the missing blue yarn hindering my bootie progress, and so cast on with some Noro Silk garden (I got at Lint's closing sale a couple months ago) for a Multidirectional Diagonal Scarf. If you google this combination of yarn+pattern, you find a ton of bloggers showing off some seriously pretty work. I'm thinking of submitting it to my work's charity auction, though I guess I'd have to figure out copyright, etc since it would be sold (with proceeds going to charity)

Sorry no pictures in this post - we haven't downloaded them from SF yet, and mouse croaked so I'm having to use the darn touchpad on the laptop - doing fancy web stuff is just a pain. Have a great weekend, all!

1 comment:

lhd said...

love the scarf pattern -- just spent some time admiring them in various blogs. I may have to look around for that yarn and try it.........the colorways are very interesting in that pattern