Meetings

One strand of Kauni meets one strand of KidSilk Haze in Kaffe Fassett colors. Isn't it lovely?

Knitting Big

I adopted a couple of hanks of a new yarn called Big from an Italian spinnery, Bracco. It's an alpaca-wool-plastic blend in a really HUGE version. A 100 grams hank is only 40 meters long! Despite being 50% plastic it has a really nice feel, it's soft and very natural feeling, it even smells lightly of "animal", a slight odor that goes away with a light wash. Even the structure is interesting, since it looks like a single ply but instead it's made of 6 very lightly spun plies.
I knitted it into an easy short rowed cowl and a 15 mm (US 19) needle at 6 sts to 10 cm (4"); it's soft and plushy, like a cushion abd it takes a really short time to knit it up. "Fun" one would think...

Big, the cowl!

Nope. It took me just this one knit to make understand i full that I do not like in the least knitting with such huge needles and such low tension. It tires me out and makes my wrists hurt. Sorry, guys! The yarn is a treat despite the hight acrylic content, but knitting it for me is a bit of a threat.

Things I like about knitting top-down

Is no verdammt leftovers!

Knitted Envelope Hat

This is an envelope hat I knitted with an 80 gram of yarn dyed with 100% natural dyes by artisan Paola Della Pergola. I used Turkish cast-on and EZ's sewn bind-off (she calls it "casting-on casting-off"), both firsts. I will try to write down the pattern. The yarn costs 8 euro per 100 grams, each skein is separately weighted and priced. For more informations about Paola's yarns check out her blog.

Such delicate colors

A few days back I went to a very large yarn shop here in Milano to leave some flyers for the new Maglia-Uncinetto website. Actually I had to pay a visit to my commercialista, someone about every Italian needs to have while, for instance, in France there are only 6,000 such professionals because the tax system is easy enough that anyone can work out how much to pay for themselves. But her office is right above this yarn shop, so I took along the flyers and left them there. Obviously, I can't possibily enter a yarn shop and leave empty-handed! I bought three discounted yarns, one I had already used to knit socks twice, once again in green, because it's not so common to get a good 100% wool sock yarn in Italy, another yarn that may be fit for socks and two hanks of a really subdued baby merino yarn.

Mondial Extrafine, subdued,
really really subdued, tones

Yup. It's a baby merino, actually an extrafine merino but it's perfect for babies and I don't personally know many people who would be superglad to knit themselves an adult garment with 3 mm needles. Baby yarn. With these colors. I guess it's no surprise that it went unsold. I honestly fell in love with it, but... Geee! In a country where most moms will not dress their babies in any other color but light pink and very light blue, this yarn is bound to go unsold. While never stopping from complain the scarce courage of Italian yarn producers, always quite a bit backwards, I am honestly apalled that anyone could think that this yarn, so bright and so thin, could ever sell.

Gifts?

I have just received this: three samples of the brand-new knitting yarns from Biella The Wool Company. 100% certified and traceable Italian wool. Like!