Just wring that toast out before you serve it, please

It's one of those completely nasty warm-season days where the humidity is about 101%. It's cool--66 degrees--but everything is yucky. Your clothes feel wet. Your skin feels damp. Paper is limp. Even your toast, when it comes hot out of the toaster, is soggy. Nasty, nasty, nasty.

But it is raining, which we need. When I planted the artemesia earlier in the week, the soil just fell apart in my hands it was so dry, and I've been watering the new stuff and the roses, so I'm sure everything's happy for the rain, esp. if it goes on like this all day--so gently you don't know it's raining until you look out and see the drops falling into puddles.

I started a new project last night. Yeah, I know, I've got two lace projects and two--er, three pairs of socks going on, along with the nephew sweater. But I'm waiting for the turquoise yarn to come so I can finish the nephew sweater, and I didn't feel like messing with tiny yarn. And yesterday my sister and I were e-mailing about projects, and I told her about this circular sweater I'd made--they're really clever and cute, and rather than try to explain it I think I'll just include a link: http://elann.com/ShowFreePattern.asp?Id=138024 Problem is that the ends in the sweater I'd made were, well, embarrassing, and I don't think this sweater will be going anywhere.

But I started thinking, what if you made one with (tada) a hand-paint yarn, so you wouldn't have any ends to work in. And guess what, I just *happen* to have another skein of that sumptuous lopi handpaint from "lotusblossom" on e-bay, in a different colorway. The original sweater is done on American size 9s, and this stuff works up okay on 10s, sooooooo...

Wait until you see this yarn--when you first see it you think it's pastels, but in reality it has these wonderful deep, rich shades that are highlighted by bits of pale pink, bright pink, spring greens, a touch of coral. Just wonderful stuff--beautiful to the hand and a feast to the eye. And really sophisticated for a baby sweater.





On my monitor these are actually fairly close to the in-person colors. I think this woman is such an artist! which is why I've got so much of her stuff lying around. There's a bit of color-pooling happening here--the paler colors seem to be congregating at one side--but I think this will tend to even out as the circle gets bigger.

I may have to order some more of the solid lopi--I think this would look great with either one of those very dark blues--Marine, maybe--or pale pink sleeves. The original sweater has a loopy edge I'm not crazy about, and you actually finish up with 5 or 6 rows of garter stitch, so I'm inclined to either stop there or possibly finish it with a row of backwards crochet in dark blue.

As usual, I'm beginning this full of excitement. We'll see how long that holds out...