Get off my back beetle!

OK usually people refer to it as a monkey on their back, but there was an episode of Dr. Who in which his companion had a large nasty beetle on her back. I think I'd want that off my back much more so than a cute, furry monkey! Anyway, back to what's on my back ... ok even I didn't think that one funny ...

I've been on a lace kick lately! I peruse lace patterns on Ravelry and look up other knitters projects. I look up laceweight yarns, I look at the laceweight yarns on my shelf. I try and match the yarns I have with patterns based on yardage so that I can get the most bang for my buck. I'm obsessed!

Last March, my LYS had a special event featuring Buffalo Gold yarns. If you haven't heard of this yarn before, its quite expensive, but for good reason. Its made up of Buffalo down and collecting it is time consuming and tedious ... hence the higher price tag. In addition, this particular yarn is comprised of 45% American bison down, 20% Cashmere, 20% silk and 15% tencel. So its got a lot of yummy goodness spun up into it. When you think about it, at 330 yds, its only $0.13 a yard (on sale, regular is $0.16).

When I went to this event, unfortunately, the shipment hadn't arrived, so all that was available was what the store had in stock. Since this yarn is so expensive and low in yardge I chose a laceweight skein. I chose purple. If I was going to pay this much for one skein of yarn, I better love it and it better be something I could wear. It definitely fits. Its a lovely shade of eggplant and it is a joy to knit with.


So what am I knitting you ask? Ishbel by Ysolda Teague. This pattern has been in my queue for a while and it takes 330 yds ... just what this skein is. I wanted to find a pattern that used most of the yarn, who wants left overs of a $42 skein? I found a link on Ravelry to one person who made this pattern with this yarn and she said she only had a tiny bit left over. Perfect.


I do have the Icarus shawl that I started last June, but it is so large, I don't want to knit on it unless I know I will devote enough time to complete one repeat of the chart before putting it down again. I know when I ended before, I clearly marked where I was on the pattern and it was at the end of the chart repeat of 23 rows. 23 rows isn't so much, but when the shawl continues to grow each row, it does get more and more time consuming to get through the 23 rows!