WIP Wednesday: Bright and Bold

Waaaaaay back in April, which in actual fact doesn't seem that far away, I started a Cable Bag from the book Knitty Gritty: Knitting For The Absolute Beginner. With a mixture of wrong yarn weight and colour, I ended up frogging it. Then a couple of weeks ago, I was told about the on-line yarn superstore Deramores, or as I call it, heaven, and found myself Patons Morocco Aran. A beautiful multi-textured, self-striping yarn. Perfect I thought, so I went ahead and ordered myself 3 skeins in the Jade/Smaragd mix, with the intent of using it for my second attempt at the Cable Bag.

As I sat down to watch the lovely Rafael Nadal take on another victim opponent, I got out my needles and knitted the afternoon away.

The first thing that struck me while knitting it, was that the yarn wasn't thick enough to be Aran. Sure the dark blue aspect of the yarn was Aran, but the rest of the yarn, to me anyway, felt even thinner than DK. I carried on regardless and as I did I realised that yarn weight wasn't my only problem.

The colours pooled just the way I'd like, but despite this it just doesn't look right. At first I thought it might have been because of my knitting skills, so I frogged it and started again. It looked exactly the same. So sadly I had to frog it, and come to the realisation that I'm never to have this rather lovely cable bag.

When all hope was lost, the American's arrived. I scored myself some Sugar n' Cream yarn in several colour-ways (all about that here) and the Modern stripe skeins were perfect for this bag. Aran? Check! Beautiful colours? Check! Dream to work with? Check!

So this afternoon I set to work, two hours later here is the results:

I am very happy. It was definitely worth the wait!

So I bet you're on the edge of your seat wondering what I used the Morocco yarn for?!

Well, it took a while but very, very early on Sunday morning, about 2am, I decided to make the Lacy Shawl from the book Knitty Gritty: Knitting For The Absolute Beginner. I thought it would be perfect as the yarn is silky soft, and has the same thickness as Double Knit yarn. And in actual fact, it has turned out quite well!

I'm planning on using the Shawl and Bag next weekend, so I only have a week to finish them both! Fortunately they are both really quick knits, I've only been knitting the Shawl for about 4 hours and I'm already on the 17th pattern repeat!

So that is my WIPs for this week, head on over to Tami's blog for more Work-In-Progress posts!