great yarns

Picture below shows the new yarns from J&S that arrived a few days ago. Two are chunky 3 ply and the blue heathered is dk. All of them are great and it's sad to know they are being discontinued now. But they are still available from J&S. The second picture shows me wearing a raglan that I did using a blue/green chunky which is also available. I had thought it would be a very warm heavy sweater but after washing and blocking it, it became much softer and lighter while still being a great sweater for the cold winter days when we don't have heat.

I use the Jacqueline Fee book on doing raglans from the bottom up and can't recommend it highly enough. In fact, I have it in two different eds and I use whichever one is found first.

6 skeins of the chunky made this sweater with just a little left over. It is about 45" around and about 24" long.

This morning I had to rummage through my stash looking for one skein of the Jamieson jumper wt yarn in a dark olive. I was thinking I wouldn't find it as I try not to buy Jamieson and I knew this was not a J&S color. But there it was: in a project for an AS fairisle that had been in VK years ago and which I haven't done yet. I only needed it for 5 rows near the end of the second sleeve.

Jewelry: I'm working these days on the brick stitch and really enjoying it. But I've started doing the same hearts bracelet now in the tiny Japanese delica beads and tomorrow I'm going to have the optometrist check me with the beads in hand to give me a stronger prescription as I'm having trouble seeing the beads and the thread as both are red. The hearts bracelet is by Yvonne Rivero from one of her Beaded bracelet books. I can't recommend them highly enough. They have great instructions that make it easy to figure out what to do.