My focus for the weekend was Pebbles. Much to my own surprise, I am finding that I like working with the Summer Tweed. I like that it stays where it gets put. I also think it drapes nicely for a yarn that I would have expected to be kind of stiff. I have not had problems with it breaking, nor does it smell bad (even when I dampened it to block the back). I think moss stitch is an excellent stitch for the yarn -- you can tell there's texture and I think it enhances the tweedy quality. I do find that working with it dries my fingers out a little bit, but once I got a little more comfortable with my tension, it wasn't rough on my skin and didn't feel bad at all.

This isn't the greatest picture, but here's the back as it blocks:

The colors are a little deeper in real life. I found that on the first few inches my tension was a little bit tight. I loosened it up (I stopped pulling at the stitches after I pulled them through, and the tension was much better) and both gauge and knitting comfort got better. It was good to do the back first. Not only did I get the most boring piece out of the way, but I got to figure out how the yarn behaves on a part of the sweater that most people won't be scrutinizing. Now onto the front!

I also got a few more goodies in the mail from Rob and Matt at ThreadBear. Here's the Cascade that I plan to make my next felting -- the Two Old Bags Felted Daypack -- project in:

The purplish skeins are the Rainer Heather, the greenish skeins are 9450 (I don't know what it is called). I've actually got enough for two bags. In one the dominant color will be the Ranier Heather and in the other the dominant color will be the 9450. Rob has kindly felted both colors and displayed them on his blog -- I think they will go well together.

I also got some color consulting help from Matt for a project which I cannot describe here on this blog. But I wanted to show you one of the beautiful color combinations that he selected (and the one that came in the mail for me).

The top skein is p201, the bottom skein is p319. I wish the beautiful orange and green tones came out better in the p319. I think they will be stunning together, both skein's colors complement each other so well! Thanks again, Matt! I think these are going to be perfect together.

And last, but certainly not least, I wanted to direct you to a neat page: my mom's dollmaking club, Looking Glass Dolls. My mom has recently gotten into dollmaking, and I am hoping someday she'll let me post some pictures of her wonderful creations. One of the dolls on the page is actually a knitted doll -- the one called Green Angel. The woman who makes the knitted doll, Kate Carras, is having a class at Knit A Round in Ann Arbor on May 17th. I'm hoping to take a little trip to A2 to see if I can take the class with Mom.