gah!

After making half of the front of my hoodie, I finally came to the conclusion that it wasn't coming out big enough. In fact, it was 2 inches narrower than the back of the hoodie. Know what that means? Ripping all of that work out and having to start the entire front over again. I guess that's what I get for setting a project aside for so long that my knitting gauge changes. I don't have the strength to start it over again tonight. Perhaps after some sleep, I will be able to begin anew. In other news, my bucket hat for the summer contest is finished. I will take pictures of that and my other bucket hat tomorrow.

Hold me to that, okay?

home again!

Actually I've been home for a week and a half, but I've been getting settled into my new summer class schedule (which is pretty fast-paced, as one class needs to fit into only 5 weeks) so I haven't had time to update.

Italy was fun :) And man was it a lot of walking. And a lot of Italian food. And a lot of people talking in a language that we couldn't understand. So while we did enjoy ourselves, it was quite draining and we were glad to come home. Venice was definitely our favorite — we loved the canals and how everything was within walking distance. We also found a favorite restaurant in Florence that we visited a couple times — once for three and a half hours as we thoroughly enjoyed the Italian cuisine, some fabulous wine, and the company of our Scottish waitress.

While we were there, we happened upon a couple yarn stores as well (lucky us!). The first was in Venice, called Lellabella.

Nice small shop, but everything seemed pretty expensive in there so I declined purchasing something. It had a great location though, with one window facing right onto a quaint, narrow canal with a gondola stop right outside.

The other yarn shop we found was in Florence near the Ponte Vecchio bridge, called Beatrice Galli.

I found some extremely soft yarn that I decided to get there - Filatura Di Crosa angora & extra fine merino in a muted mint color. I can't find it on any website so I will try to take a picture later. I'm thinking of using this for the sophie bag knitalong. I also missed the deadline for the spring bucket hat contest - I had the hat finished but never got around to taking the picture! Darnit. Anyway, I'm going to go for the summer contest instead. This time I should be a-okay since I'm almost finished with the hat. I'll try to get pictures of both hats up soon. Other than that, I'm back to working on my hoodie from Stitch n Bitch too. It goes so fast. After these bucket hats, I forgot how wonderful some yarn is to knit with. Calmer is much nicer on my fingers than this linen print that I've been using lately.