My weekend with Julia ...

... and Kristina. As you know, Kristina came to visit this past weekend. We planned to do lots of knitting and, specifically, we wanted to begin a quick knitalong on Jared Flood's Habitat hat. I originally hoped to use my grey Coopworth handspun for this project, but it was too bulky. I decided to try Julia instead.

Julia is a 50% wool / 25% alpaca / 25% mohair worsted weight yarn designed by Kristin Nicholas. She loves color, and the line includes many beauties. Kristina and I first became aware of this yarn several years ago when a sweater of Kristin's appeared on the cover of Interweave Knits ("Colorwork Classic," Winter 2004, Ravel it or see the magazine cover here). Kristina was smitten. At that time, the yarn was more difficult to find than it is now. She scored enough for this sweater while visiting her sister in North Carolina - an LYS carried it. Now my LYS, The Mannings, carries it, and I wanted to try it.

I picked this deep red, called "Geranium," for Sharon's hat. Kristina is knitting hers out of Knit Picks Andean Silk (55% superfine alpaca, 23% silk, 22% merino) in color "Merryweather."

We arm-wrestled our knitterly friend Kris to go to The Mannings with us on Saturday (it wasn't too hard). Kristina and I both found buttons for our Must-Have sweaters. Kristina also got a button for a felted bag. I got Julia, and some reinforcement thread I intend to use for the heels in my Harvest Socks.

Then we got MORE Kris time on Sunday when she came over for knitting in the afternoon. And we began the hats. Okay, so there's not a whole lot to look at yet, but the cabley goodness is emerging.

I finally got to use my pumpkin stitch marker. And note how tidy Kristina's tail is - it's wound around a bread bag thingie. Don't throw those out, knitters!

FUN WEEKEND. Hope yours was, too!