In Love with Malabrigo...

I'm not a big knitter. That can be proven by the fact I haven't picked up any knitting needles in a year! So I'm a little rusty and cautious. Please don't talk to me while knitting!! I may lose a stitch. But I can handle listening to/watching tv at the same time. I've never been very adventurous when it came to needles and yarn. I'm a stitcher at heart and not a knitter. But I've managed to knit a few scarves, a few hats, a baby blankie, washclothes and one sock. Notice I said one sock and not a pair. Socks are hard to make and I was incredibly discouraged when said sock was a size or two too big!

Funny to think that when I started this blog, oh...three years ago now...it was supposed to be about knitting. But with no camera and too much dating, my blog became a journal for all the crazy dates I've been on. Go figure...but back to knitting for the moment...

I've worked with lots of fibers...cotton, wool, fun, fluffy synthetics. Yarn just makes me feel toasty. It looks welcoming and has so many possibilities. The local yarn shop was offering this knit-a-long in the form of the afghan I've mentioned in previous posts. The yarn it calls for is Manos De Uruguay which is a color-rich wool yarn that's pretty but a little scratchy. I had reds and pinks in mind for my afghan but all the Manos reds were too orangy (ewww) and the pinks too pale. So the shop owner pointed out Malabrigo yarn. It was so soft and plush to the touch. Not something you find in 100% wool yarn. This yarn is awesome! It comes in amazing colors and it knits up easy. If I could jump into a big tub of Malabrigo yarn, I'd be in heaven. It's that warm, fluffy and soft! So I decided to pick four colors and do a rotation between the four colors to knit up the 12 blocks. I've got three colors bought and I'm happy with them but I am having a really hard time picking the fourth color. Maybe blog-lurkers can help me out here. The colors I've decided on are:

Geranio: it's a deeper pinky-red in real life.

Little Lovely: pink shades - variegated

Cactus Flower : lighter, not as bright in real life

Now for the colors I'm trying to decide on:

Vermillion : seems nice on computer but haven't seen it in real life...wonder if it's orangy and if it is, it wouldn't go with the color scheme

Shocking Pink : I kind of like this color but then I think it would be too much pink overall

Intenso: sorry the pic is so big, couldn't find the color on the manufacturer website. This was my original 4th color pick from my knitting shop visit. I liked that it had red and pink in it along with a tiny bit of orange and my original thought was darkest color to lightest in each row (i.e. geranio, intenso, little lovely, cactus flower). But then I became doubtful.

Amoroso : similar to intenso but brighter because it has more orange in it. I think I like intenso better.

So definitely having problems deciding. I still have time to pick my fourth color. I ran into a snag over the weekend. I was doing such great time on Block #1 and was all excited about it and maybe had about 50 rows or six inches of my 12 inches needed done. When I was showing my mom how well I was doing, I noticed an error about 1.5 inches from the beginning! Gah!!! It was way too far down for me to try and fix it and if I was going that far down, I may as well start over. And even though the mistake wasn't that noticable, the perfectionist in me wouldn't allow me to ignore the mistake and keep on knitting on block #1. So I ripped out 6 inches of lovely textured rib knitting to start all over. Now...I'm on row #2. Sad...very sad. So there will be no good progress pictures on that for a bit as this coming week is too crazy for me to get any real progress done. Too frustrating. So I'm loving the Malabrigo a litte less but it isn't the Malabrigo's fault. Note to self: Pay attention to the knitting outcome as you go along to catch mistakes early!! I still love the Malabrigo! =)