Tidying up

My Yarn Corner in the dining room had reached ridiculous proportions by the weekend so I culled it (obviously, this doesn't actually mean getting rid of yarn; just shovelling it into carrier bags and taking it upstairs into the Abomination of Desolation which is the back bedroom). I now have

A bag of Current Projects: 1) the as yet un-re-cast-on Jaywalkers 2) the shawl I can't show 3) St Brigid, in her purple but unprogressed splendour.

A couple of imminent projects: 1) the yarn for the shawl after this, which will become the Peacock Feathers Shawl - this is Cherry Tree Hill laceweight from Woolly Workshop in the Peacock colourway.

2) the yarn for the sweater after next (next on the needles will be Eris, using the Mexican Wave yarn unpicked from the sweater-which-didn't-work-any-better-the-second-time), which is an assortment of very beautiful alpaca and alpaca blends.

The main rose-brown and grey yarn at the back is a 100% alpaca brought back from Bolivia two years ago by friends in a stunning act of generosity. This yarn has so far been quite decisive about what it doesn't want to be so far; I started making a Meg Swansen sweater from Knitting in America/America Knits with it and managed to get it catastrophically wrong three times - first time, I made a Mobius-type strip; second time, I made it too small and realised this at armpit-time; third time I got to the same point and realised due to crappy counting that I had 28 sts (or two full repeats) more at the front than at the back... Thankfully it pulls out as beautifully as it knits up. Then I got the variegated pink yarn from Silkwood at Stitch last year - it feels as if it has mohair and alpaca in it - and Elann had a sale so I got the Baby Silk in the other four colours; and the beads may or may not get used... No idea what I'll do with this at the moment, although I think it's going to involve some contributions from this book, but I have time to work it out; and I want to do justice to the yarn. It lives in a bag on a hook which also hangs my ironing board; because the Bolivian stuff still has a real alpaca type smell, and cats find it completely irresistible. I'm going to need to keep the finished sweater in a pillowcase or something to make sure they don't love it to death...

And then finally the Yarn Which Is Too Pretty To Let Out of My Sight. I've got this down to one basketful - there's a fair amount of sock yarn for grabbing at short notice; and some skeins of Koigu, Lorna's Laces, Kaalund etc. This is stuff I pick up and fondle...