Recent Stash Enhancement Acquisitions...

...or "S.E.A.'s", as they are otherwise referred to herein.

First -- an impulse buy at the check-out counter of my favorite LYS, thinking it would make a nice greenish scarf for one of my friends who says green is her fav color:
It is Crystal Palace "Iceland", 100% wool, Color: 9573 Ultramarine, Lot A. 109 yards, 2.5-3.5 sts/inch on size 10.5-13 needles.

Upon further rumination, I felt this might be a bit too bulky for my friend, so am setting it aside for something (??) else. I love the colors, so whatever it ends up being, I'll love. A hat, maybe?

And so, this Tuesday while out of town for work I picked up this yarn at that town's one-and-only LYS:
This is very green yarn - even greener than it appears in this picture. I guess "kelly" green might be the closest descriptor I can think of. It is Baruffa Lane Borgosesia's "Tibet", color: 3, Lot 9045, ~110 yards, 56% Mohair, 14% Virgin Wool, 30% Acrylic, and suggests knitting on size 7-8 needles. (Can't figure out the gauge from the tag, though). It has little poofs of various other colors on a thread carried along with the green. I've tried Googling to find out more about this yarn, but have come up with nothing about it except the Italian manufacturer's website, (which has an interesting little article about pilling, by the way), which makes me think the yarn I purchased has been discontinued for awhile, probably because that color is just too darn green. I'm thinking it could be toned down a bit if carried along with something else....

Next -- yarn for a fun scarf for my niece's 16th birthday in January:
She loves pink and orange, (she painted her bedroom walls bright orange and has pink accents all around her room), and the Dawn yarn on the left has some orange puffballs mixed in with the varying shades of pink. The yarn on the right is "Apart" by GGH, a very soft and furry matte eyelash to be carried along with it. The LYS had a display version of these knitted together (although different colors) which was incredibly fun to touch. I think Jess will like the finished version, if I ever get to it. I need to get cracking, though -- her birthday is New Year's Day and I have a couple of other things to knit ahead of her item.

And remember this? Well, I still need to frog it and start over, and then I'm going to carry it along with some dark teal GGH "Apart", like Jessica's scarf, (above).
This scarf may end up being for me, unless I decide there's someone else who might like it. In any case, I won't be dealing with this until after the holidays.


Awhile back I acquired some pink Berroco "Chichilla" to attempt my first chemo cap, (my first cap of any kind), for the lovely lady mentioned previously. She's now had two rounds of chemo and is now officially "ready" for her cap, and yet, (shame on me), I've not gotten very far with it, as evidenced below:
When I attempted to start it at home, I got frustrated immediately trying to cast on the required number of stitches. I took it to the nice ladies at Lettuce Knit, who let me sit and knit with them for almost two hours, and as you can see, I still didn't get very far. At the end of that third row, we ended up with two extra stitches. I'm also sure that I got the stitch count for the 3x2 ribbing off, and so I'm going to yank this thing out and start over. I want to finish it this week, by God! The trouble with this yarn is that because it is a fuzzy chenille, it's really hard to see your stitches. This makes the process of knitting in the round for this newbie that much more difficult. I think I'm going to be sitting in the remedial knitting circle for a long time to come. That's okay, though - I still enjoy it. But it'll be years before I can knit anything as nice as other folks do.

After staring dreamily at the picture all day yesterday, I caved and bought the kit for this, which should be coming within the week. It'll be hard to keep my itchy fingers off of that project before the holidays.

And, true to my word, I bought some Berroco yarn on ebay for this. Interestingly enough, the Optik colorway recommended in the pattern is Millefleur,
which to my eye doesn't have any green, greenish-blue or teal in it, so all of the teal color for that "Bora Bora" scarf must come from the Crystal FX "Caribe", apparently. I couldn't find any "Millefleur" on ebay anyway, so I instead purchased two hanks of "Tiffany", which are much more pleasing to my eye and should make an even more beautiful scarf when all is said and done.

Here's Tiffany:

I love the purples in it.

But after surfing around, I found an even prettier Optik colorway called "Peacock". Anytime anything is given a color name of "Peacock", I know I'm going to like it. It is discontinued and I could only find one on-line yarn store selling it, so of course I had to buy some! Check out these Peacock colors:

These colors are so me. And they are eye candy. I am thrilled beyond reason to be getting this.

Optik comes with 87 yards to the hank, whereas the Crystal FX carry-along yarn for "Bora Bora" comes with 146 yards, so since I'm getting two balls of the Crystal FX 'Caribe':

I can probably carry it along with both Tiffany and Peacock, and create two lovely scarves in the tradition of the "Bora Bora" scarf.

I can hardly wait!