Progress and a Trip to an LYS

I haven't blogged for the past few days, but I have not been idle. Discriminating viewers will notice that I have changed my blog's template, and I am still in the midst of fiddling with colors. M, alpha geek that he is, gets so excited when I play around in CSS and HTML/XHTML, that I have caught his enthusiasm. In addition, he found the Mac app dragonfly for me at the Apple site. It is a web color chooser and gives the hexadecimal code for each color, and it allows you to make a palette of four colors. Plus it has a toggle drawer which shows the color with text over them, where you can play with text colors. It's a little addictive.

But I have been knitting. The left front of my lilac La Gran cardigan is done and the first sleeve (I decided to knit a sleeve before the right front to break up the sleeve making process) is coming along:



Sock progress progresses, but not in an interesting to photograph manner; just around and around heading for toes.

Since the La Gran carigan is going well, I wanted to get started on the diamond fantasy shawl in Fleece Artist Merino Ruby. Alas, I had not the appropriate needles. Therefore, I braved a Saturday shopping expedition with M. I am NOT a shopper. M usually has quite a list of errands, and so taking me along can be problematic. For you see, when I am done shopping, whether I have even finished my list, much less anyone else's list, I AM DONE SHOPPING. Trying to bribe me with promises of ice cream often fails. Luckily for M, I will usually sit in the truck playing solitaire on my PDA or knitting a sock. Shopping often gives me a headache. I am not a good consumer. Madison Avenue ad execs find me disturbing. But I did OK today, and M was very patient at the LYS (local yarn store, for my readers who aren't bloggers).

My favorite LYS is Rumpelstiltskin in Sacramento. The store is cozy and FULL of all sorts of wonderful yarn and possible project ideas. Plus the staff are kind and helpful if I want help. Otherwise, they have no problem letting customers browse and oooh and ah. I went in for needles, but I found some beauties that also had to come home with me:

The dark blue Misti Alpaca is for some fingerless gloves. It was unbelievably soft, and a pattern for the handwarmers came free with the yarn. It's a bulky weight so the gloves are only 27 stitches in the round in a twisted cable rib.

The second is Trekking XXL for socks. I was so glad to learn at Romancing the Yarn that sock yarn does not add to one's stash. That was a real relief! I like how the little bit of lavender in the yarn looks near the bit of my lilac sweater that's hanging out of my basket. A serendipitous color find.

Third is some mohair for a scarf that was just too pretty to pass up. But my favorite find was this:
It's so pretty it deserves two pictures. It's a thick and thin wool from Italy, and the luster is fabulous. I may try a bias, thin scarf; we'll see.