Yarn sale!

Today the local yarn store, Yarns 2 Ewe, kicked off its two-day "Customer Appreciation Sale" where everything in the store is 20% off and books and clearance items are 30% off. Yowza! I went and browsed for a good two hours, just fingering the different yarns there and trying to decide what I wanted to buy. Just this past year, the store moved to a new location with more space, and there is a ton more exciting stuff there than before. Although I spent a fair bit of money today, I'm tempted to go back tomorrow to buy some more!

Before I show you what I got, I have a few (bad) pictures of what I've been knitting on this week. I took these pictures fairly late on a cloudy day, so the lighting is pretty terrible. Sorry about that.

First off, I have a My So-Called Scarf, knit for LawSchoolKatie, who likes pink and generally all things glittery. You can't really tell in this picture, but there's a bit of gold metallic stuff wrapped around two plies of wool, one gray (and somewhat roving, if you can tell by the color variations) and the other pink. The colors are really a lot more vibrant in the real thing, but again, bad lighting.

I also made two baby hats, but I sent one off in the mail today before I remembered to take a picture of it. Below is the other one. The hat that's en route at the moment is slightly bigger (I made it first and wasn't sure how many stitches to cast on) and made out of the same kind of yarn, but with some darker gray tweedy flecks. The yarn for both is nice and thick and machine washable.

One is for Clerk the First's new baby (remember CtF from when I worked for the Judge over the summer?) and the other is for the new little girl of a Duke law student whom I met while working for Big Firm.

And, finally, a picture of GPG's socks. Unfortunately, none of the pictures of him actually wearing the socks came out right, so you probably can't tell how big these things are. I knit them on US2 needles and they are 78 sts around, which is a LOT. Usually I only cast on 66 sts for socks for normal sized people. The foot alone is 80 rounds from the heel flap to the point where I start decreases for the toes. That was a LOT of knitting.

And, finally, all the yarn I bought! Very exciting stuff. First, I bought 4 skeins of Queensland Collection Kathmandu DK in a very beautiful lilac/lavender color (which is kind of washed out in the picture because of the light). It's really nice stuff--85% merino wool, 10% silk, and 5% cashmere. The Chairwoman picked it out before she left for Japan. I'm planning on making a cowl for her to wear around town while she's adventuring, since it's pretty cold over there right now.

Next is two skeins of GEMS Opal, which is machine-washable merino wool. It's in a nice bright red because this yarn is supposed to make up another cowl that the Chairwoman can wear while riding her bicycle. The red is for visibility and the machine-washableness is for practicality. We can't have her ruining the nice Kathmandu while she's riding her bike, right?

Since I liked the Opal yarn so much, I bought another skein of it for myself in a nice eggplant purple. I hope to make some arm-warmers out of them. There are often times when it's just cold enough that my arms and fingers are cold when I'm walking to school, but it's still warm enough that I get overheated in a fleece and start sweating. Those are times when I'd like to just wear a t-shirt so I stay cool while walking, but could use some arm-warmers to keep my arms warm. I'm not sure what they will look like, but I think I'll probably rib them to make them nice and form-fitting so they don't slouch on my arms.

Last but not least, I bought 4 skeins of KOIGU!!! The picture below doesn't really do them justice. Two are of a nice light blue with flecks of orange; the other two are of a darker orange and blue. Can you tell that I like the blue/orange combination? I think I'll make socks out of them if I don't decide to make the feather-and-fan scarf from Last Minute Knitted Gifts, which alternates two different complementary Koigu colorways.

I also bought some needles for the cowls and a pattern book. I'm so tempted to go back tomorrow. But I think I will have to bring GPG along so he keeps me from spending too much money.