Tuesday, September 04, 2007

Knitting Fidelity (borrowed phrase)

It's difficult to be faithful and finish a knitted item with so many wonderful yarns and patterns, and when the exact yarn called for in a pattern is already in your stash, well, what harm can it be? My youngest dd just moved to the North Central part of Pennsylvania and that means she'll be dealing with true winter weather this year after having lived in Central Texas for several years. So baby things are set aside in favor of larger needles and worsted weight yarn for a hat and mittens for her. The hat, Kraemer Yarns' Tam Topper is completed and the Ladies Work Mittens are about 15 rows into the cuff, done 2 at a time on 2 circular needles. I'm using Kraemer Yarns Naturally Nazareth in Spring, Pollywog, and Moss. Same dd wants a "funky" hat so I'm considering doing Marnie MacLean's Lake Park Hat in Regia Surprise Color yarn, which on socks has a very interesting color patterns that vary with the size sock you make, so it should be fun to watch the colors play out in this hat especially with it's crossed slip stitches. Here are some examples of Regia Surprise Color socks - I just love them. I'm using color 1263 which has a black background like the sock to the right. The ones below it are other examples of what the color will do in different sizes. I'm anxious to play with it, but dgd is due mid-October
so I also need to finish her blanket and other items. Once I finish the mittens I'll work on the baby things again, and save the Lake Park Hat for later.


Yesterday, hubby and I along with two of our close friends, Carol and Rich, worked at the California State Fair where the Sacramento Valley Garden Railway Society had a display in the building with the Toytopia display. Unfortunately was also the only building with air conditioning problems and we had the most people through the building because of the display of toys. In spite of the heat it was wonderful to watch the faces of the small children as well as to see the child in the older generation shine through. Little ones were completely mesmerized by the three tier layout, with each tier running a different type train. The train that ran through the valley area (lowest track) was a passenger train which set off bells on the crossing gate as it crossed a road and then continued to make a large circle by entering a tunnel that took it around the back of the layout and out through another tunnel portal as it continued it's trip around the mountain. It was fun to watch the littlest ones look into the tunnels to see where the train had gone and if it was coming out the other end yet. The train that ran about half way up the stucco mountains made a circle with wide loops at each end. It was a smaller European style engine with smallish cars, one holding small toys, another with a Jeep on it, and one with a couple cows in it. The train that ran te ridgeline of the mountains was an ore train with two of it's three cars filled with rather questionable quality gold ore, and it ran back and forth only. There were two prairie dogs that ducked down into their holes only to pop up again and look around, as well as a box on a loading platform that shook as an eye looked out through a small hole and a voice from within yelled "Help, Help, Can someone let me out of here? To children who aren't accustomed to having large scale (G scale) model trains around it was an amazing site. As usual, I forgot to take my camera, which is too bad because it truly was a work of art, and the background scene above the mountains was nothing short of spectacular. If I can get pictures from anyone I will post them in the next few days.


It's well past my bedtime, so I'll leave you with this knitting thought . . .
Don't think of it as having too much yarn, just think of it as doing your duty as a residential storage facility.