Oy, oy, oy: Koigu

Well, after missing the last couple of meetings of the Knitters' Guild, my knitting buddy and I finally made it out last night for a talk by Maie and Taiu of Koigu.

One of the coolest things, besides...everything...was that we got to see this coat in person.

Oh, and just like Oprah, we got gifts!* Not quite under the seat, though. There were two bags being passed from knitter to knitter. Unfortunately, our "gang" likes to sit at the back of the room and the bags started at the front. So by the time the yarn made it to us, the choices were limited. Here's what I chose.



A nice bright colour. It's even brighter than this ball of 'Vermilion' Malabrigo I came back from vacation with in December.



I like the bright colours. Just look at the shawl I've been knitting. (Go ahead and look at the previous posts, I mean. I'm not putting any photos of it up in this post.)

Remember me saying that I needed a travelling project, something small and compact so I didn't have to lug the big shawl around with me?

Well, I finally got my act together and started an Odessa hat at the Guild meeting. And in spite of starting out knitting the tail after casting on 100 stitches using the long tail cast-on, I did actually make some good progress on it.

And I enjoyed it so much I knit some more when I got home last night, and some more when I got up this morning. At this rate I won't have any more to knit and I'll have to start a new one. I guess I'd better pace myself.



The beads I am using are two colours, placed randomly. The colours are what I call "wildberry" -- an earthy red and a muted purple. There is lots of pooling, but that's okay.

The other cool thing about the Guild meeting is that someone on Ravelry was giving some yarn away, and when I asked about it it was still available. So we met briefly after the meeting and she passed the yarn over to me. It's partially knitted into a project (no, I won't be completing it), but still.



It's Euroflax Barcelona by Louet. Right now I'm sort of thinking market bags (sacrilege, I know) because our local grocery store chain is going to start charging for plastic bags and is encouraging people to bring their own reusable bags to take their shopping home in.

I'll keep looking for other possible projects, but right now, knitting a couple of Euroflax market bags sounds like a pretty good solution all around.

* One of the gifts I forgot to mention was a sample of Soak, for handwashing delicates and handknits.