One of the members of my knitting group found an amazing store called Fil, which is in Colonia Roma, Mexico City, D.F. I was glad to have found a Mexican yarn store dedicated to mostly natural fibers from Mexico and Latin America. I may dedicate an entire post to the store later, but right now I wanted to share a finished object made from beautiful yarn I found there.
The Yarn: Lanai by TM Imports. It's 100% wool and to my eye it looks like an aran to bulky weight yarn. It's a beautiful, variegated, single ply yarn with long color repeats between raspberry, wine, light denim, and olive. I found the yarn to be beautiful to work with and it produced a very pleasing product.
The Pattern: #21 Arm Warmers by Twinkle. Published in the 2011 Holiday Collector's Issue of Vogue Knitting. (In case you are wondering, I haven't gotten tired of Vogue Knitting yet. I hear they are coming out with a crochet issue soon! Be still, my heart!) The pattern is considered to be intermediate difficulty, but I didn't find it to be hard at all and I am DEFINITELY NOT an intermediate knitter. I think the thumb hole is the reason that it rates so high. But that's only 2 difficult stitches in each piece. Not too bad!
Needles: Cheapo plastic 8mm knitting needles purchased from Telas Parisina. Totally affordable and perfect for this project. They are kind of long needles, though.
Time: About a week. All told, this project could be completed in an evening. I was going pretty slowly and I couldn't knit this in the car.
Tips: I wrote out the pattern repeats on a scrap paper and crossed off each row as I went along. This allowed me to stay on track with the lace pattern, increases, and decreases.
Check out my Ravelry page for Slinky Sleeves. :)
