Feathers and Fans

Crazy feather yarn I purchased at Whitefish Bay Farm. The Turkey Feather Yarn was crafted by Fiber Artist Laurie Boyer in Wisconsin and consists of turkey feathers, Salish x English Leicester wool, and cotton thread. I have ten yards and am thinking of some sort of scarf/necklace thing to wear to a charity fashion show next month with a grey wrap dress.



And here is some 100purewool yarn for Elizabeth Zimmerman's Baby Surprise Jacket from The Opinionated Knitter in Pasionaria for my brother-in-law-in-law's new baby girl (that would be my brother's wife's brother's baby). I haven't done one of these yet, but the yarn has been sitting in my stash for a while and needs knitting, and I think the variegated yarn should look lovely in this pattern.



And here is the Zephyr DK (which I consider more of an aran or knitting worsted) at the start of my Slouchy Cardi. First sleeve is complete, and I cast on for the back last night. I've come to the conclusion that for me, now, knitting stockinette back and forth is sometimes easier on my wrists than in the round a la Cobblestone. Knitting in one piece means you have the weight of all the yarn on your needles, even though it's distributed along the circular needle. Some knit-bloggers extol the virtues of top-down raglan knitting, but with Cobblestone I realized that I like knitting the sleeves and then attaching them to the body, rather than knitting the sleeves once the body is complete.



Loving the yarn! The sheen! The texture! I foresee more Zephyr in my future.

As for fandom, the new Knitty is up! Neiman would give me an outlet for the two skeins of Debbie Bliss Pure Silk in Turquoise sitting in the stash. And it's a bottom-up seamless raglan. How apropros! And I haven't done any stranded colorwork yet, so this would be good. The other appealing pattern at first blush is Cinderella. I started a pair of socks recently using the Yankee Knitter family sock pattern (#29 at the bottom of the page) and some nice sock yarn from Laughing Rat Studio. I started out OK but got bored (sorry, sock knitters of the world!). But Cinderella may kindle an interest in socks again. I really like that heraldic pattern and had tagged it in my copy of BW's Second Treasury. Plus these are knit on US4s!