Knitterly nirvana

Or rather, various knitterly items arriving en-masse today!

Here's the haul:



- beautiful Bergere de France yarn from Cucumberpatch, to make the jacket (with printed pattern). The picture shows the colours pretty much true. Very soft and lovely yarn, both are acrylic/wool mixes. The lefthand yarn is Canaries in 'Lama', and the right hand is Toison in 'Manchon'. The 10%-off promotion makes this pretty good value - I doubt you could buy a jacket this nice for what the yarn cost.

- a pair of 4mm Brittany birch needles I ordered with the yarn. I've been musing on comparing birch and bamboo for strength, primarily. I have a pair of 12mm River John birch needles, but thought I'd try Brittany in a size I find I use quite a lot. Thinner needles are bound to be more fragile, I'll see how the birch compares to using bamboo. Also saw Lantern Moon needles on the site, almost fell off my perch at the price! They look lovely but I doubt I'll be buying any :-)

- Scarf Style from amazon.co.uk. Only ordered on Thursday night, along with the new Harry Potter DVD. I've only glanced through this so far, there look to be some great scarves to make. I bought this as I've seen a lot of people using patterns from it, and I love my scarves - especially in this freezing weather! One thing I did notice was the photography, a lot of deliberate blurring/soft focus in a gradient. It makes my eyes spin slightly! I'm also not sure what it adds - one thing I am very keen on is good clear photos of knitted items. When you're following a pattern it helps immensely to have decent reference photos.

- Interweave Knits magazine Spring issue, from P&M Woolcraft. The subscription seems like a grand idea, this magazine is full of great patterns. I've been looking through it this afternoon, and have found a great pattern for a flared top in Colinette Giotto which I think I'll do in preference to the minidress-top in Femme Fatale. There is also a tunic top I like very much, some great fingerless mitts, a nice shrug with lacy flared sleeve ends and tons more.

- the latest Knitting magazine, which I have really only glanced at. I'm not keen on the dress shown on the cover (the only time I ever tried on a knitted dress I looked awful - this was in my late teens, in Laura Ashley!). However there is a lovely cardigan pattern inside which I spotted and liked, then found that it used Garnstudio Alpaca, even better!

Thanks for the insightful comments on knitting magazines folks, much appreciated. I'll definitely chase down a copy of Vogue Knitting. I agree regarding the Simply Knitting and Knitting mags - they are too fond of using patterns that already appear in published books. While this is nice to point you in the general direction of books/yarns, it seems a bit of a cop-out on the publisher's part. Why not commission unique patterns that you can only get in the magazine? I suspect they do so more some of the smaller items but what about the big stuff.

Speaking of patterns, I ordered two Bergere de France patterns books from Get Knitted, the Designer Knits for Women, and In. The first one of course has the jacket in it, but as TGirl has pointed out, there is a great collection of patterns in the book that we would actually wear!