Ah, the siren song of the Foxy Lady! I could not resist her ample charms.

I’m sure you know what this is. Yes, it’s a swatch for Clapotis. Friends, I must expound upon the virtues of the Cherry Tree Hill silk and merino. This Foxy Lady is no tawdry harlot. She’s expensive, but the experience is worth every penny. This is 313 yards of milk-and-honey luxury. This is what the gods’ togas are knit from, I’m certain. I scarcely feel worthy. I half expect that the clouds will roll aside and Zeus will lean out and smite me for profaning his Holy Fiber.

Lest you should think I knit only in blue, here’s a picture of some yarn that’s bran new in the stash. (And yes, I did mean to write "bran new" – "brand new" is a corruption of the original phrase, which originated because bran was used as packing material. Check your Louisa May Alcott or other writers from that period – they’ll bear me out. And why this useless trivia? It comes to you courtesy of my inestimable father, who is chock full of such tidbits and also passed down his propensity for collecting them.) Anyway, here’s the yarn:

Gorgeous, ain’t she? That’s two balls of Rowan Yorkshire Tweed Chunky in "damp", a slate blue with flecks of green, white, and sky blue, and two glimmering skeins of Cherry Tree Hill silk and merino in "foxy lady". I had it in mind for a gift, but it was described as being russet, when it’s actually berry tones, which won’t work so well for the person I had in mind. So now I have to decide whether it will be a gift for somebody else or for, well, me. It’s far and away the most glorious stuff I’ve ever put my hands on – as springy and light as perfect bread dough and softly glowing like a pirate’s cache of rubies in candlelight. I don’t know if I can restrain myself from winding it into a center-pull ball today. Even if I had a yarn swift (and how I wish I did!), I’d still do these skeins by hand for the pleasure of touching them.

The Yorkshire Tweed is for the adorable flower hat in the Winter 2004 issue of Interweave Knits, designed by Kristin Spurkland. I love wearing cute hats, and I can’t wait to knit this one.

Here they are – my first pair of mittens!

And just in time for some prime mittenish weather. Last night we had driving snow/sleet/ice pellets and I was very happy to slip these babies on for the two-block trek to my brother’s apartment.

They’re knit from Green Mountain Spinnery Mountain Mohair in colorway "lupine" – recently identified with the help of the excellent website www.knittersreview.com. I plucked it from a remainder bin at Green Mountain Spinnery when we were in Putney last September without knowing what it was, but I was drawn to this pretty blue with its flecks and threads of cranberry, silver and white. It’s a 70/30 wool/mohair blend, and it knits up very smoothly.

The tuck pattern on the cuffs, as I mentioned previously, is adapted from a Kim Hargreaves sweater design called "Merry" in the Rowan Yorkshire Fable book. I’m very pleased by the way it turned out – I love a good long mitten cuff, and the tucks add a bit of style. They’ve received a lot of compliments from my coworkers, who came upon me perched on a stack of paper sheaves in the copier room, knitting away as I waited for twenty copies of a novel manuscript to print. Of course I’m happy to share my decidedly homemade pattern, which ought to work with any worsted weight yarn. It’s particularly good if you have long, thin hands like mine. I’d also be curious to try knitting them a little larger and then felting them a bit. But that experiment will have to wait until next winter – I certainly hope it’s not going to be mitten season much longer!

Here she is, folks, making her first public appearance in knit blogging society! Okay, so she’s not exactly all dolled up for the occasion, but we’re working on that. We’ll purty her up in the coming weeks. But Blue Garter is officially alive and kicking.

And what better way to start the spring than with stash enhancement? Yesterday evening I was sitting at my desk, looking longingly at my calendar and telling myself that my yarn orders (yes, orders plural) couldn’t possibly arrive before the end of the week, when what to my wondering eyes should appear but Will the mail guy, with a package for me from France!

Nine lovely skeins of the most summery yarn there ever was – Phildar Phil Ruban cotton tape in Porcelaine from Becky, and a sweet postcard of marionettes from Lyon in the bargain! And as you see, I couldn’t wait for natural light to take this picture, so here you see them on my fruit shelf in the kitchen (the only place with decent artificial light). I showed remarkable restraint in not grabbing my #8 needles and casting on for a swatch of this fun stuff right away. But as it’s intended for a cute tank top and matching poncho for my honeymoon in Kauai, let’s not put the cart before the horse – let’s get a little more work done on the wedding stole first. So I did. But first I took the time to appreciate everything about this fabulous package, including the jazzy Phildar plastic bag and the exotic French copper staples.

And then Mingus had to sample the international cuisine:

Just look at him licking his chops. Yum, French plastic! Such a cat.

In other blue knitting news, I’ve finished the Merry mittens – pictures to come soon!