Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Beautiful things

What's awesome this week?

Well, how about a fantastic full moon, with Jupiter and Venus near by? The night sky is lovely this time of year, and I'm pleased to live in warmer climates where I can pause at night to appreciate it without freezing my throat. Orion is still up early, and Sirius too; hard to spot them (or the Pleiades, or Andromeda) in the full moon's glow. It tends to opaque the sky. We live in a very dark city which is astronomically useful but makes it challenging to get around at night during the dark of the moon. Still, going half an hour out of town means seeing the night sky like a splash of fresh water, all the stars splayed out and glittering in the darkness.

On that note, I've acquired the best astronomer's yarn, ever: Dream in Color Starry, in the Wicked Royale colorway. It's impossible to capture it, but here are a few attempts:






It's dark blue and black, a lovely fingering weight yarn. Not as buttery as Handmaiden Casbah, not as plush as the three-ply sock yarns that have that lovely beaded texture (Shibui, Koigu, Claudia Handpainted, Aslan Trends). Still, it is 98% merino and has a lovely softness to it.

What makes it the best astronomer's yarn ever?

2% silver.
sparkles.



stars. More than you can see in the pictures, just like taking a real pic of the sky. More than you can count. winking and shining...




beautiful.

Now, what am I going to do with it? If I had a plain black yarn with a similar base, I know exactly what it would become: endpaper mitts, or something similar--taking advantage of the very subtle color changes to make a muted pattern that still had enough contrast to look like the skyline at twilight.

No comments:

Post a Comment