Busy week

Received my new Signature dpn's this week. It turned out that I had not finished the order for the circular needle and now have to wait until Feb 4 to order it. The company was so overwhelmed with orders for the new needles that they have closed orders until then. Back to the new dpn's--at first I wasn't too impressed with them, but after an evening of finishing a sock, I am in love. They are smooth and slick at the same time. They are also warm--like my Harmonies. I changed from the Harmonies to the Signatures mid-sock and didn't see a difference in gauge. My plan is to research what size needles I use most of the time, and then to slowly add those sizes of Signature needles to my collection--which is large enough!

I was able to share my Masterknitter experience with the knitting guild on Thursday evening. Diane B. and I shared our experiences and our notebooks. I had never gotten all of my material from the course together--it filled three Roche Bros bags. The group seemed to really appreciate our talk and we all agreed that it would be fun to have me and Diane share what we've learned in another program. That's for next year.

On the actual knitting front, I'm working on a sweater for me! It's the Renaissance sweater that was in my queue on Ravelry.

I'm using an alpaca/ wool mix from Valley Yarns. I'm not convinced that I like the alpaca. It just doesn't have enough body. The other issue with this pattern is the actual stitch that is used. It's a mosaic diamond stitch and there were issues with the definition of the purl bumps. When the purl bumps were going in one direction they were very defined, but in the other direction they receded into the background.I finally figured out that I need to loop the yarn around the stitch very loosely when the new purl stitch is part of the diagonal going to the left. Sounds complicated but it works! I changed the pattern to be all in the round and that makes the stitch pattern much easier to follow. I had planned to use my new Signatures, but that was not to be--I'm using my Harmonies which are also very pleasant to work with. I had started out with the Options, but they were too slippery.