We're really excited and making shopping lists, both for ourselves and for the mill. We're hoping to get some beautiful fleeces to make some goodies for the mill store. I have to say that it's a little heartbreaking to be shopping for things that won't actually go into my stash, but Adam keeps reminding me that if we want the business to be successful, I can't view the mill as my personal yarn factory. Drat.
Because Rhinebeck is pretty much wool mecca, people are kinda nuts about their Rhinebeck Sweaters. I'm one of those people too, except this year I waited until a week before to become nuts. The time crunch combined with "must have a Rhinebeck sweater" fever resulted in Adam driving me to the yarn store in Honesdale Saturday afternoon and then swearing that if I knit for the whole afternoon and didn't make him apple crisp for his efforts, he would cut all my yarn into 6" pieces.
I took that threat seriously. He got apple crisp. And I picked out an awesome pattern: Selkie
I justified my insanity because:
1. Selkie is made out of bulky yarn. Bulky yarn knits faster.
2. Selkie is made on size 13 and 15 needles. So it would totally fly off my needles.
3. Selkie is actually a cape/wrap, so there aren't any sleeves. That makes it really just half a sweater, and half a sweater would be way faster than a whole sweater. Right? Right?
By Saturday night I had a collar half done:
I LOVE these buttons. They're handmade and I managed to find four matching ones in the store. The yarn is Debbie Bliss Winter Garden, which I'm kinda meh about. One on hand, beautiful feel and colour to it- it's a baby llama, merino, silk and linen blend. On the other hand, I picked out so much freaking hay and hard linen bits I feel like I could have fed it to the sheep and saved some money on our winter hay supply. I suppose the name justifies it- it certainly had enough plant matter to be a garden.
By Sunday morning the collar was totally done and on my third try, I successfully managed to pick up the 100 stitches around it:
And last night I cast off, had a hysterical panic attack because it looked too short and then Adam calmed me down and promised it'll grow when it's wet and we could block it bigger and even if we couldn't, it's a wrap and I'll have a shirt on underneath so it's not like I'll have a navel-baring sweater so for the love of all things sane could I just go get a shot of whiskey and get out of his way and let him do it.
He did it pretty well:
Now I'm just waiting for it to dry so I can sew on the buttons tomorrow night and be ready to bust down the gates Saturday morning.
Also, gratuitous snuggly Niobe and Nagu photo:
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