A wooly christmas and projects for 2015

Ok... we're in the middle of carnival trying to cope at night with the loads of frappe, castagnole and frittole (all typical italian carnival sweets) that we have ingest and I want to write about what?

Last Christmas... oh well...

perhaps I'm losing my battle with the sweets, so just humor me.

How was your Christmas?

Mine was GREAT! For the first time I received a lot of knitting wool.

And here it is in all its wintery splendor. Well, my house is not very bright in its best conditions, now with the cloudy days and the constructions all around the windows, it was impossible to get a decent shot. This is the best I could do in all this time.

Whatever, thanks to the bright and never forgotten tradition of writing to Santa, everyone in our family was forced to write down their wishlist. As we live in a technological time, this wishlist comes with links attached and is one of the best thing one can imagine when you're thinking about buying a present that could actually make the receiver happy.

My list was obviously a wooly one, and as I added to every link instruction that could have offended a monkey,

I received a lot of little wonders. 

Here it is... I had to still block it. Isn't it fabulous?

Dear Husband, that lives within close range from knitting wool and is quite skilled in online purchases -_-'' contacted Valentina Consalvi, Snailyarn, and following my advices and hers (she knows me and my tastes) bought me a wonderful DK in blue and green-tones. They are calling for a Kynance cove... the contrast colour was an awful excuse to call on Valentina and have a wonderful afternoon  harassing her yarn... in the end I decided for a bright orange (and two other about which I'll talk another time)

As there weren't three skeins of the same blue, husband told me,  she kindly dyed them for DH... she offered to dye also other two skeins and change my green one but... I couldn't let the green one go. I love both colours too much, As soon as I finish Mailin, guess what I'm going to knit?

Exactly, a Kynance Cove. I'm really looking forward to it.

I loved the pattern, the fit and this yarn is simply fab!


Then, as her informatic knowledge can be resume in "I can't see anything, check the aerial" ;-) but has still more initiative than others, my sister-in-law decided to stick with the old and well proved method of "brother, why don't you think about it in my place?"

And so here I had other two beauties from Valentina. These two are two variegated fingering skeins in the very autumny colour "foliage" :-). 

Well, the variegated yarn are very interesting but are quite a particular type of yarn... said between us, I really don't like to use this nice yarn for knitting (not very well-knitted) socks!

So I'll use it as contrast colour in Moore, paired with a wool form Abruzzo bought at Abilmente. this one is cream coloured, maybe a little thicker that the variegated but... oh, who cares? 

Being a Zen knitter I'll follow the flow! :-) different thickness can be also quite interesting. 

And dulcis in fundo, last but not least... actually last only because the photo was the last downloaded and I hate to move the pictures in the posts, here's the wonderful donegal tweed in a jewel-like green, a gift from my dear sister. 

It caused an infinite amount of anxiety to my sister because it was shipped directly from Ireland and arrived on Christmas eve when they weren't at home.
This means, no gift under the tree.

BUT, as she has really golden hands when it comes to every sort of hand-made (i still have to find something that she doesn't do well when crafting is involved) I found a wonderful and sheepy decoration made from nuts, wool and pistachio's shells that is already with all the other christmas decorations. 

lemongrass

Finally, and despite all the grim predictions of my hoodoo sister, the yarn arrived. 12 balls of pure green irish tweed!!!

Heaven.

I'm already planning what to do with it. I'm deciding between a Purple Storm or a Lemongrass by Joji Locatelli . 

It's an historic event that, after an endless string of Isabell's sweater, I'm drooling over a pattern from someone else... I feel almost a traitor :-)

Purple Storm

I like these two sweaters a lot, expecially Lemongrass. I've never knitted something by Joji Locatelli but I like her designs very much.  :-)

Lemongrass has a comfy and fun shape, with rounded bottom edges, bottons on the sides and a cable motif. My only doubt if it the cables and the tweedy yarn go well together. 

The Purple Storm hits a sore spot of me. It's a long time that I'm thinking about knitting a military-style jacket and this one has something that reminds me of it.

What do you suggest?