Good for Ewe!

My husband called me this morning to see how my day was going so far.  I told him things were going well, but what he heard was "I'm super happy because I've done nothing except knit on the sweater I started yesterday from the second I got home from taking the kids to school."  And darn it, he was right.

It's not a secret that I love the designing & creating part of this job way more than the "sit down, do math, and write up the patterns" part of the job.  Unfortunately I haven't figured out a way for the patterns to write themselves yet, so I do eventually get around to that part.  But whenever possible, I tend to get lost in the next knitting project.  I'm going to have to get better at resisting that!

But in the meantime, I have something exciting to share.  It's a new sweater happening from new yarn.  I'm feeling a little like a jerk for showing this one off because I don't think that this yarn is available yet on-line, but if you are interested in giving it a try, she does sell it in a number of yarn shops across the US.

I was very interested in a new yarn line that my LYS rolled out during their first anniversary celebration in mid-November.  I loved the colors of the yarn they had in stock, and I was intrigued by the fiber blend of "Sultry Steps", the sock yarn I picked up: 40% merino, 40% baby llama, and 20% nylon.  I've read that llama is hypoallergenic, which I'm really hoping makes this a fairly non-itchy yarn because I've been having trouble wearing anything remotely itchy lately.

I was really impressed as I started knitting up this sweater.  The yarn feels very squishy and fairly soft.  My swatch softened up even more after washing, so I'm very hopeful.  This yarn also has random little white hairs that don't absorb the dye, which gives it not so much a "halo" as just a little added "fuzziness".   Kind of like if you had a cat sitting on your lap while you were knitting and accidentally knitted a bunch of its hair into your sweater.  Only classier.  If you click on the sweater picture, you can probably see a few of them sticking out. 

So far, so good.  I'm hoping I can get this sweater done before Christmas.  Considering I've worked up 8 inches of the body in less than 24 hours, I think I've probably got plenty of time.  Not bad for a sweater made out of fingering-weight yarn on US #2 needles!