Late to the Party, Again

Believe it or not, I am knitting something other than corrugated ribbing. But you have to get the story before you get the pictures.

It's not that I go looking for excuses to cheat on my resolution to knit from stash.  It's that there are always extenuating circumstances. The Market at Stitches Midwest has always qualified as the ultimate extenuating circumstance. As if all the yarn I bought there for Inspira Cowls had never happened (which technically, I can argue didn't, because yarn bought to make gifts doesn't count, right?), I went searching for my Stitches yarn.

True confessions time.  I have, in the past, bought some truly delicious yarn at Stitches.  There are the two hanks of Brooks Farm Mas Acero in a cornflower/porcelain kind of blue.  A couple years ago I succumbed to the lure of Silk/Merino Worsted from Ellen's Half-pint Farm and bought yarn that makes me think of poppies thinly scattered in wheat fields. Then there was the year I bought vast quantities of Jojoland Melody Superwash. I have never found the right pattern for any of these yarns, and so they languish. 

This time, I determined, would be different. This time I would restrain myself.  This time I went with a pattern in mind.  This time, when I returned from Stitches, it would be with something I wanted to make immediately.  I chose my pattern and downloaded my knitting folder onto my Nook, to make sure I had all the information I needed to make Carina Spencer's Catkin Shawl, and made a beeline for the Miss Babs booth.

I did not come away with yarn for the Catkin Shawl. Instead I was seduced by Color Affection.

I should mention that I had never been excited by CA.  I admit I looked at it pretty closely when the Yarn Harlot extolled it. Despite one of my favorite knit blogger's praise, despite the inspiration of nearly 10,000 knitters on Ravelry alone, I was unmoved. Just couldn't see the appeal.  

Back to the present. Miss Bab's has put together color sets called Trios designed specifically for Color Affection (or other three color objects).  She had a sample knit up in colors that, for me, recalled nothing so much as the Wicked Witch of the West - black, green, and purple. So not my colors, and yet I was completely won over. I liked the way the colors moved through the pattern.  I was intrigued by the cleverness of the construction.  And then there's that part of me that is something of a sucker for a curving shawl. 

As it turned out, none of the color sets called my name, but that didn't stop me. By the time Stitches was over, I had a Trio of my  own - Denim, Deep Sea Jellyfish, and Wheaten.

I am loving this shawl.

I've already started sneaking onto the Miss Babs website looking for new combinations. Although, now that I think about it, I do have some pretty amazing fingering yarn that hasn't been set aside for anything yet.