French Girl Knits!

Kristeen's beautiful book arrived yesterday, only 10 days after Amazon shipped it (the book fairy must be able to find my house in his sleep!) :-) and already several KALs have started to organise, with a few knitters already half-finished! I put my hand up for the Veronique airy shrug, and considered buying more Colinette Parisienne from Sarah, or the Kidsilk Haze suggested by the pattern, then realised I have just the right amount sitting in my stash -- not the colour I was thinking of buying, but it is a colour that I wear, and I did buy it thinking that I would wear it. I'm swatching it, trying out some lace patterns for the lower back: maybe Anne Hanson's vine flower, or the diamond motif from Diamonds & Triangles ... I considered the Myrtle Leaf pattern, but that requires lacework in both directions. The vine flower pattern is much more subtle in laceweight -- I nearly gave up on it, because I thought it wasn't showing up but, after knitting the diamonds above it, the curves became quite visible.

I'm surprised that no KAL has formed for Satine, the first pattern in the book -- it's so pretty, and looks relatively quick and easy to do ... except that I need to go out and buy 8mm and 9mm needles -- I swatched the 12-stitch lace pattern on 10mm and it is too big. I'm hoping that some fuchsia mohair in my stash will be enough (the Sirdar Kid Mohair is from the days before labels specified yardage, and it's not in the ravelry database, which lists 111 yds for the Hayfield Mohair 80) -- I'll frog the back of the Alterknits abstract cardigan that has been hibernating for months, at least partly because I had second+ thoughts about a fuchsia back with the much more sober front.

So I'm making inroads into my stash, which is just as well, since I ordered some Habu laceweight silk this morning, along with the silk and wool stainless steel yarn for Romi's designs.