stash enhancement

I do love Eat.Sleep.Knit's surprise sales. They're not my LYS, but I love that they are dedicated to selling hand-dyed yarns, and I love the homey community feel they give online. And even though they were probably swamped during their Black Friday Surprise Sale, they still managed to send out my orders very quickly and everything arrived on Monday! Here's the whole lovely collection:And some better individual portraits. I've fallen in love with Madeleinetosh's Tosh Sock, and I scored several colorways during the sale, including:


Nikko Blue,





Baltic,




Duchess,





Cedar,






Citrus






and Violin!




I've always wanted to try some Lorna's Laces yarn, and acquired some Shepherd Sock! In
Bittersweet and




Daffodil,

as well as


Ashburn
and




Beverly.




I was also lucky enough to pick up some Cherry Tree Hill Supersock Semisolid in Iris






and a couple of skeins of Dream in Color Smooshy (Blue Lagoon and Visual Purple).





I feel like a very rich woman. It's pretty amazing just how much happiness I can derive from a lap full of wool. Beautiful, luxury works of art that will provide hours of entertainment as I knit and then many more months of pleasure as I wear them. I'm incredibly grateful that something so seemingly simple can make me so happy. No matter what happens in life, beautiful yarn can always make me smile! That's riches.
~Phosphorelated

why not to block

I'm afraid two of my lovely sweaters have gone to time-out after I foolishly went on a blocking spree without my measuring tape. I was so excited to wear the lovely things and didn't pay enough attention.

The lovely green sweater is ready to have the zipper installed, and I was very careful to ensure that the fronts were the same, correct length...but the sleeves, which fit perfectly pre-blocking, have taken on a gorilla-ish aspect and are a good two or three inches too long.

(OK, it is entirely possible it's only an inch or two of excess length, but it felt like a lot.)

My beautiful purple Rogue hoodie, on the other hand, has the opposite problem. The whole thing fit very nicely, and then I went and blocked it all to make the sleeves go in more easily, and now body and sleeves are each about an inch too short. Bother.

That'll teach me to be conscientious and always block my knitting!

~Phosphorelated