I went to a local yarn shop. The visit did not go as planned.

My one goal was to buy a soft mid-weight yarn for a hat in a neutral-ish colour. Maybe like a nice hand-dyed grey or beige. Maybe they’d have something like the Malabrigo Rios I used for a pair of scarves but in a more subdued colourway.

(I need a hat to pair with my red leather jacket. My spring/autumn hat is red, and my gloves are red, and the overall impression of them all together is just way too red, so I need to break it up. And also, it is crazy that I am wearing my spring/autumn outerwear in January.)

Did I buy anything like that? Not at all. I came home with almost the opposite. Rosarios 4 Bulky Light Print is super bulky (not mid-weight) and definitely not a neutral colour. But it was so soft and I loved the colour so much.

I’ve never used a yarn even close to this kind of weight. You can’t really get a feel for it from the photo, I think – should have included a banana for scale. The hole in the middle of the knitting is the size of my fist, and each stitch is about the size of the nail of my little finger. Huge!

Using this yarn feels very different than my usual projects. It goes very fast, but also requires a whole other kind of attention than my usual knits; not something I could do while reading, for example. It’s nice to try something new! And I’ll get a hat out of it that definitely won’t be red. It remains to be seen whether I can wear it with the red jacket; it might be a bit too much. The sewing & crafts fair is coming up in a month, hopefully I’ll find an actual mid-weight hand-dyed grey yarn there.

I also bought material for a pair of felted slippers. I’ve never knitted anything with the intention of felting it, so that will also be entirely new.