A New Swatch

Well, my knitting needles didn't stay idle for long.

Yesterday afternoon I found myself on the lovely island of Alameda and discovered Yarn!, a cute little shop with a very helpful clerk who went out of her way to help me dig 13 balls of Llama Seta out of the clearance bin. This stuff has everything I was looking for in my next project. It's alpaca, silk and a touch of cashmere in a yummy light sage green, and it was less than $5 a ball. Sold!

I also found a great pattern booklet designed to help you create a variety of drop shoulder pullovers. I'm particularly fond of a basketweave-like stitch, which I think will highlight this solid color yarn perfectly. Plus, it looks simple.

Determined to apply the lessons learned from sweater #1, I immediately went to work on my swatch. The yarn label calls for size 6 needles. So, I gave that a try. Turns out that square was too small. So, I moved up to size 7 and gave it another go. Seems it's just about perfect. Just now, as I was looking for a link to the yarn, I noticed that many places list this as 4.5 stitches to the inch (which is what I want) on size 8. That sounds mighty big to me. Size 7 it is. Which means I get to knit this sweater on my absolute favorite bamboo needles!

Now, it's time to pull out the tape measure and size up the Merry Stitcher. Besides being sloppy with the gauge on sweater #1, I think I made it one size too big. I want so much to make this one just right.