Shade Card Fun

British Breeds at Halifax sent their shade card today. http://www.britishbreedsyarns.co.uk/ It took a while to come, but it looks most encouraging. The prices are reasonable - about a half to a third of 'posh' yarn prices - so I could make a test garment in this yarn, which would be nice and wearable, and if I love the garment make a 'real' one in the fashion yarn. By serendipity the ball turned up at the charity shop. It was interesting to find the shade (oatmeal Blue-faced Leicester double knitting) and compare the ball to the tiny sample. The colour is true enough to make me feel confident about ordering and the ball feels soft. Let's see how a swatch washes, that's the real test.

The sleeve of the Debbie Bliss green shrug grew an inch or so last night. Knitting the sleeve in the round is staring to look better. I've almost broken my bad habit of shoving the needle into the work before settling the yarn in my hand when knitting in the round on 5 needles. Once you start looking at things like this, it's easy to see that yes, it would stretch the yarn and make one more untidy unevenness in a piece of knitting, but until I watched Lucy Neatby's DVD, I was oblivious to the fact!

I also worked carefully on the tips of the needles and the stitches have shrunk slightly. They look a fraction neater and are the desired 22 stitches to the cm instead of 21 stitches to the cm. I am enjoying the bamboo needles, but the tips are just that fraction blunt. Next sweater I make on different size needles, I'll try some of the famous Knit picks. I'm almost looking forward to knitting Mrs Hill's cabled jacket a second time because it will be a chance to use my new Knit pick needles.