I Am NOT a Yarn Addict

I am NOT a Yarn Addict, I am NOT a Yarn Addict.... Huh? Wha? Oh, sorry, I must have dozed off...

Dear Blog-

Well I know, Blog, that you were just as terribly excited about the Kauni yarn yesterday as I was (am), so I thought I would take a few minutes to bring you up to date, Kauni-wise. I got the last skein wound up this morning, and I thought you might like to see them in the wound state. They always look so different, don't they?

Rainbow (EQ) nestled in its basket. See? It does a true ROYGBIV. I guess that's probably why they named it Rainbow.

Greens and Yellows (EK)

Blues and violets (EL)

Yesterday evening after talking to you here, I sat down with chart and yarn in hand and swatched the Rainbow. Not literally, of course. Like a couple of others, I have decided that I'm not going to use the original chart that comes with the pattern by Ruth Sorensen, but rather work another stitch pattern in it's place. I searched all of my books Friday morning, Friday afternoon, Saturday morning... and then found someone on the net (Jeanie, mentioned here yesterday) who was working one of her KC's in a stitch pattern that I really loved, and that she was gracious enough to share with me. As I told you in the previous post, most people seem to be knitting their Kauni cardi on US 4s, so I was going to swatch mine on 5's, 4's, and 3's. But I could see right away that I really liked the fabric with the 5's and left it at that. One repeat of the pattern and a blocking later and this is what I ended up with...

Kauni cardi swatch, US 5's

When I measured my gauge over 4 inches this morning, I was dead on at 7 sts/in for every single one of those four inches. The pattern calls for 6 sts/in, but I don't think I would want the fabric even that little bit looser. So I have figured out my stitch count for a repeat of 14 plus 1, plus steek sts, and I am more than ready to take off. I just have, um, a few things to bring closer to completion before I can do that without overwhelming guilt. Yes, all knitters have UFO's and multiple projects OTN, if they dare to call themselves true knitters, but we all have an idea of what critical mass means to each of us, and I am frighteningly close to mine. So if I can hold off for another week, I can dive in without suffering unduly from a bad case of Knitters Guilt.

The green/yellow and the blue/violet will be used for the Autumn Cardi when Ruth has the pattern up for us. I know I mention this every time, but I figure if I put it out there every day the pattern will come to us that much sooner. Ruth worked her second AC with the green/yellow as background and blue/violet for the leaves. Again I will take artistic liberty and reverse those, with blue/violet as my main color, and the green/yellow for leaves. This yarn comes in several other colorways that I would love to possess. Someday...

Jeanie had warned me that the yarn can be kinda messy, but look at what my winding table looked like after I got all four skeins wound-

Luckily it was all so lightweight that the vacuum hose just slurped it all up, but Wow, I've never had a yarn shed that much before. Do I care? No! This is my beloved Kauni. Say nothing against it!

Well, I feel the need for an afternoon nap coming on-
Lynda