It's Here! It's finally here!

My Pure Merino is FINALLY here for the long anticipated Nantucket Jacket!! You'll remember the jacket from the cover of the 2006 Winter Interweave Knits. I ordered it from Handknitting.com (which I've heard a lot of good things about) on Jan 9th and just FINALLY got it yesterday. Apparently there was a major hold up of the yarn at the border. Do you think the border cops thought there was drugs mixed in with the yarn or something?! Well, maybe there was some Kid Silk Crack (aka Kid Silk Haze) in the same shipment.

This is the most expensive project I have ever made, even at the reduced price of $6.70 a skein. I have to tell you, though, that this yarn is worth every penny of that! It is soft and squishy and WONDERFUL! But then again, I adore Merino wool, and this is absolutely top of the line. I went ahead and sprung for the yarn called for for a few reasons.

1. I LOVE merino, and I wanted this sweater to be something that I couldn't wait to put on.
2. I wanted the stitches and cables to be as crisp as in the picture. I think someone described it as like fondant.
3. Pure Merino is shrink resistant! That means that not only is it soft and incredible, I'm far less likely to ruin it :D
4. Bordeaux is such a luscious color.

So, last night I managed to swatch (I tried 9's 8's and 7's.) and settled on size 8 needles. I'm making the size 36" and got all of 1 row knitted...lol Now I need to get all my work done like a good girl and I can work on it some more :D I think all other projects will be on hold until this is done. I have never seen a pattern that I absolutely NEEDED to knit as much as this one.

And since I had the camera out, and I can, I present some shameless kid promotion.

I let Brendan feed himself his own mashed potatoes last night and he was amazingly clean! The spoon is mostly for decoration. he ate it all with his fingers.

And now some cute pics of the older kiddos, just because.