Ingenue

The climbing: a bust. It was far away, it was raining, wet enough that we slipped and slid on the way to and from the crag, and the crag itself sucked. In fact, I slid about 10 feet from the bottom of the hill and instead of clambering up to the almost non-existent trail, just decided to let gravity take over and slid the rest of the way down. Bleh. Obviously no one had climbed there recently because there were birds' and bats' nests in the pockets, and "leaver" 'biners on 75% of the climbs. We actually drove home the same day in disgust and disappointment.

I've lived in tropical locales all my life: the Philippines, Nigeria, Southern California. Naturally, I'm in denial of winter. Hence, this:

Ingenue (thanks, Wendy!), designed by Lauren for Alchemy Yarns (of Transformation). It's a cleverly-knit empire waist top: first, knit the herringbone band, join it, then pick up stitches from both sides to create the bodice and then the bottom. Finish off with a crocheted picot edging. C'est belle, oui?

Because the stated yarn, Alchemy Silk Purse is out of my budget, I'm using Gedifra's Fiocco Oro, which BF's mom gave me earlier this year. It's a worsted cotton/polyester blend as opposed to a fingering/dk silk, but of course gauge can be easily recalculated. Fiocco Oro's variegation occurs in short lengths of 3", so the pooling is minimal. Now I'm not a big fan of blue, but lately I've gotten used to it. This, and Cara's handspun shawl is why. I just love the blues and greens, punctuated with teal and a pearly white, accompanied by a line of gold. BF's mom picks niiice colors.

The yarn itself is enough to drive you nuts because if you knit fast, you'll poke through it. Splitty it is. It's a length of multiple-ply matte cotton and a length of shiny woven polyester, both dyed together I suspect, lined up--lined up, not spun together--with a length of woven gold, and bound with a single ply of matte cotton. Frustrated at one point, I threw it across the room. That little burst must have taken it all out of me, because I finished the ball without any splitting. Huh. Knitters, do throw your yarn when you feel like it!

Knitworthy stuff:
◊ Lana Grossa's Linea Rossa patterns are very, very nice. And elegant. The yarn stores I visited in Germany carried a lot of Lana Grossa yarn. The pattern support is actually quite good. I wonder why this brand's other lines (other than their sock yarn, that is) isn't as widely featured in the U.S.
◊ Interweave Knits' Winter 2006 preview is up! My favorite is Kate's Equestrian Jacket, perfect in tweed. Thrummed mittens are a good thing too. A pair to take along on climbing trips, to supplement all the Gore-Tex and neoprene, may be a good thing.
◊ I suspect Jacquelyn Mitchard is a knitter. Writer of The Deep End of the Ocean and the newly released Cage of Stars, she's sprinkled bits of knitting in the books I've read. In her latest, I've found:

"We were an ordinary family, a little bit more Birkenstock-y than some (my mother knitting a sweater for everyone but the horse)...." (p. 12)

"I would watch Mama at the table, her hands busy with knitting sweaters and caps for Rafe for winter...." (p. 85)

"I got boxed CD sets and Gap jeans and two hand-knit mohair scarves from Sister Barken." (p. 139)

"The Sissinellis were the only family around us who weren't Mormons.... [t]hey were big rock climbers, with all the gear and helmets and junk." (pp. 21-22; okay, it's a climbing reference)

Plus, Miss Mitchard's book jacket photo shows her with a shawl (I suspect it's handknit) around her shoulders as she looks at her horses. Hm. Knitter? A friend's reading the same book and she's e-mailed Miss Mitchard to find out!