Becka (of Whimsical Knitting) has made my life so much easier...

First it was a pair of socks... sometime ago I saw the "Embossed Leaves" sock pattern in an issue of interweave knits. It being a back issue, and because of where I live pretty much anything I want of that sort must be mail ordered, it was difficult to get my hands on a copy. This made me a very very sad little knitter. I really wanted to make those socks with all their leafy goodness, so much so that I had seriously contemplated searching through all the Barbara Walker treasuries for a leaf pattern like that and seeing if I could make it into a sock. But this taking time, and not even being sure I could manage this, I kept putting it off. When along comes Becka's "Leaves of Whimsy Socks"!

This made me a very happy knitter. Then I won it in Becka's earlier contest!! This made me a very ecstatic little knitter!!!

Well I'm about 1" past the gusset on the first sock, and all is going quite nicely though slow due to Christmas knitting. I'm really enjoying this pattern! See?:

This is a close-up of the leaf pattern;

Since the yarn I chose was a little thin for the pattern, I decided it might wear longer on the thin yarn if I do a reinforced heel stitch, so I did deviate from the pattern there and did eye of partridge, this was my first time doing that stitch, I like the outcome, but it was much more confusing and hard to keep track of than the 'normal' heel stitch!

I got to go to a REAL yarn store today! I'm in civilization, everything is flooding north and south of where I'm staying, but luckily not here, and not on any of the roads I would use for where I wanted to go. I feel very blessed!

I decided to go ahead and splurge on some yarn... I got two skeins of Blue Sky Alpaca's "Alpaca & Silk" (the name, you'll notice, is very original...) I don't normally find a place in my budget for 'luxury' yarns for myself, but it's a Christmas present, thus a justifiable purchase...

The brown yarn in the picture is my mom's Rowan "Cashsoft" for some tip-less gloves - also destined to be a gift.

[NOTE TO MY SISTER: YES. I know this is your favorite color. I know that you would really like alpaca and silk. I already have your Christmas present and it's not this. I'm sorry. And furthermore - You may not, under any circumstances steal my yarn - or the finished item. I'll be watching it...]

And who could possibly resist that little alpaca-y face?

Actually at the store he seemed a little 'bound-and-gagged', they'd stuck the barcode right over his nose! So that was all the more reason to save him and bring him home with me, I promptly released the poor alpaca from the offending bar code.

And this brings me to the second reason why Becka has made this little knitter's life so much easier. Since I still needed to keep it in my 'christmas budget' I could only get just enough of this yarn for a lacy scarf... I started on the endless search for the perfect scarf to make with this lovely yarn. A pattern I'd really enjoy knitting to maximize my enjoyment of this yarn (I very rarely buy yarns like this!), a pattern that would showcase the sheen and drape of the silk and the soft cuddliness of the alpaca, and last but not least, a pattern with at least a little lace work to help spread this yarn a bit further but not so much that it didn't still look 'soft'. After looking at lace scarf after lace scarf, I started to despair that I'd need to go to the trouble of finding just a stitch pattern and then working it into my own pattern, something I really don't have time for! When I remembered that Becka had a lace scarf on her blog... the perfect lace scarf for this yarn! The *drumroll*...

..."Touch of Whimsy Scarf"!!

woohoo!

Speaking of Becka - Ya'll should check out her current CONTEST! the deadline is Nov. 13th - that's this coming Monday! So ya'll should go over and check out her blog and check out the current entries and send her your own photo! I'm not entering this time, since I won the last contest, I'll sit back and enjoy the entries from the others and heartily congratulate the winner when it's all over!