And another 2 new projects

So, I've now got these 10 skeins of Debbie Bliss' Pure Silk in Black.

Therefore, since I did buy the yarn with a view to making a wrap for choir performances, about a week after I got the yarn, I start making swatches from this blue acrylic I found in a bag (forgotten stash of my Mother's).
I'm really looking for a stitch pattern that looks semi-sophisticated (so to speak), so I'm rationalising that if it looks nice in a mottled soft blue squeaky acrylic yarn, then it'll look good in a lovely black silk yarn *crossing fingers*. I work up and discard half-a-dozen samples (there's 2 that have potential, but I'm not sure. . .).

Then, I go onto the Knitting fool website (http://www.knittingfool.com/) and peruse the stitch patterns on there. I come to "Scroll". I work it up and. . . whee! I like it. I like it so much, I'm now knitting a scarf in it, out of that squeaky blue acrylic.

Here, see what it looks like on both sides.:


I'll see how far I get on this scarf, since I've only got the one ball as seen in the upper photo.


I am, however, planning to knit up a swatch of this stitch with the black silk on smaller needles, and check out definition.

If needed, I'll tweak the stitch pattern and take out a row and stitch in order to make the "blocks" smaller.


I'll post pictures when I get to the silk. Since I need the wrap before November, I'll be starting work on it as soon as I finish the scarf.
Later.

Knitting!

Went and took advantage of the John Lewis sale at Trafford park and bought 10 skeins of some lovely silk yarn. Spent too much money, but it was much too nice to resist - and a VERY good price for the quality. I'm thinking of going back before the 22nd (last day of the sale) and seeing if there's some other yarn I can spend money on.
Yes, there's a new project I'd like to start, but I don't have the yarn for it - it's a lovely sweater by Debbie Bliss in her new "Rialto" pattern book for the wool of the same name. The sweater is called "Sophia" and the main reason I want to knit it can be looked at here:
http://www.kangaroo.uk.com/catalogue/page_detail.php?pId=971&tId=18&stId=1369
The problem is that I do not want to spend the money on the rialto yarn, strictly because I don't like the colours it comes in to use on THIS sweater, so I'm trying to find a substitute that will hopefully be cheaper, as well as in the colour I want
(which I'm having trouble deciding - either a duck-egg blue or a clear soft blue-green. Yes, I know there's not much difference, but I'm picky.).

Recently I worked on a few of the blanket squares and a bit on the fingerless mittens (got some more yarn for a couple more pairs of those as well).
The problem with the knitting at the moment is that my OU homework is now needing more time delegating to it, and that makes my time for knitting suffer.
Not that I've got the wherewithal to knit, since right now (and for now, until the end of October) I'm primarily thinking about harmonising music, brain development and psychology and evolution. *sigh*.

It doesn't help that I've started two journals on Wordpress. Go look if you want to. One'll be found under "The Periodical Mumblings of a Crafter" - it's sort of an experiment. I read enough comments saying how Wordpress is fantastic, so I'm seeing if that's true.

Until such time as I'm in my right mind - or left one.
Bye.

Books

Ok, a couple of days ago, I ran across two sites for collating books. Mainly, the ones that have been read.
The sites were Goodreads and Shelfari. No, I've not linked to them as I'm being lazy - you can easily find them via Google.

I've signed up for both and I MUCH prefer Goodreads. Shelfari is slow and relies on the fact that every single book you input/select is going to recieve a review. That isn't me.

Goodreads is much faster and allows for three categories - read, to read and currently reading. You can input books into your list a few ways, but the quickest is to click upon the star rating system near each title and voila! It's in.

I'd post a button for the goodreads site and my read page, but it requires I know about widget placement and HTML. I'm not there yet and it'll become abundently clear when I am.

Now I just need to find a comparable site for my music.

Later.