String Theory

A couple of weeks ago, I spent the weekend in the Chicago area visiting my friend Barb Burghardt.  Barb and I were great friends early in our high school days but drifted apart as we approached graduation.  Then we spent 50 years with no contact whatsoever.  We got back together on Facebook a couple of years ago and have been talking to each other and visiting since then. Barb lives in Glen Ellyn which is on the west side of Chicago.

Among the fun things we did while I was there was to visit String Theory.  It's a small but fun yarn store in downtown Glen Ellyn. As usual, I couldn't keep my hands off some of their wonderful yarn.

 

I bought three skeins of Daylights by Harrisville Designs. It pairs with Nightshades but with a twist. The Daylights colors are all white but with a hint, a dusting of an additional color. It's ingenious. I bought Caffeine.  No surprise here, that is white with a dusting of brown.  It also comes in white with a dusting of yellow or orange or red or blue or purple. Nightshades is exactly the same except the complete opposite.  It is black with a dusting of yellow or orange or red or blue or purple.... you get the idea. There are 12 colors of Nightshades to the six shades of Daylights. Both Daylights and Nightshades are DK weight and made of Cormo wool.

Cormo is a very bouncy fiber that spins up into a very bouncy yarn. Interestingly, Peggy and I both bought some Cormo spinning fiber at our first fiber festival and hated spinning it.

Much as I was taken with the white shades, the black shades didn't interest me.  What caught my eye was a brushed mohair in coffee shades.  What a fabulous pairing with my almost but not quite white yarn with subtle brown overtones.  Done!

So I came home with five skeins of yarn and now I needed a pattern. I was looking for a shawl that would be easy to knit and was already set up for working two yarns at the same time, one of them DK and the other a lace weight.  Found it! It's called the All Fall Shawl by Tif Neilan.  You can find it on Ravelry for $7.00.  Now I'm ready to go.

I'll let you know how it progresses but it may be a while before I start on this project.  I have three sweaters in line first.