Well I made my 1st swatch ever. Yep, I am growing up in the world of knitting! :o) LOL

Hey! I did my 1st gauge ever last month and now I went a step up and did a swatch!

The swatch is for my niece’s soon-to-be birthday present ‘Sugar ‘N Spice’.

I bought yarn from a closeout sale a couple of weeks ago that did not have a yarn band on it at all! So I have no idea what I have over here except that it is 100% cotton/100 yards (supposedly – I don’t have a fancy smancy scale to weigh it) LOL!

So I knew immediately I was going to need to do a swatch just to check things out since it is a mystery yarn.

I had to knit it 3 times just to make it come out “close”. I say close because I never did get it. I am using a US4 needle and refuse to go any smaller to get the gauge. The pattern actually calls for a US7 & US8. I am off by ½ inch too much. Oh well it will be fine.

I did wash and dry it with a load of clothes (wasn’t hard to find a load to do this with! LOL :op) . It did not shrink at all, but faded a tad bit. Which is fine since it is a really bright color!

So Saturday I visited another LYS I had never been to before since it is really way out of my way. My intentions were really just to go and look, but of course the NORO was calling me! :oD

(can y'all tell I don't like for my yarn touching the grass! LOL)

They had a colorway I wanted to try but the other yarn shops did not have them. So I grabbed two of #224 with purple in it of course!! :o)

And #88 more of a nice soft brown ball (will probably be the only one I buy in that colorway).

Of course I had to go by my most favorite LYS just to ‘sit-n-knit’ with the ladies – so I got a little bit done with the Ms. Marigold. And it was good seeing all the regulars I had not seen in about a month!

I did end up buying another pair of Addis US4 for this Sugar ‘N Spice pullover since I knew I wanted to knit up the swatch.

I traveled out of town today briefly and was able to get started on my panel 2 of my Lizard Ridge. This project is so portable (in the beginning – up to the first few squares when knitting them all together…after that it gets to be twisterville with all the wraps/turns – yep I am going to learn how to knit backwards soon! A girl at the LYS is gonna show me! WHOA!)

Well that is all for me now in knitting news!