The rest of the Stitches stash arrived!

It's pouring out, I have a lovely cup of tea, the husband is praying in the front of the tv in the living room (the NY Jets have a particularly difficult row to hoe this afternoon, a snarky, sarcastic wife might have said impossible... who moi?) and I have the computer all to myself.

In the comments from the last post, Jodi at A Caffeinated Yarn asked some really good questions about colors and yarn of the Main St. pullover from WEBS, specifically "How did they look in real life? Do you think the texture would be OK for Fair Isle?" Knitting minds must think alike. When I first saw this sweater in their catalog my concerns were exactly the same!

I really became drawn to this pattern after seeing all the gorgeous patterned yoke sweaters on the Zimmermaniacs blog. Oh my goodness have you looked over there? It's like it's difficult for them to make something that's not nice, I really like so much of that stuff. It's inspired me to re-read Knitting Without Tears and I'm so glad I did. I get more out of it everytime I read it. If I was a true Zimmermaniac I would have sharpened my pencil and done some math and tried to come up with my own Zimmerman sweater. I might eventually some day but for now, I'm still a Zimmermaniac poser and will just try to start out with my little Main St. sweater and see how I do.

Anyway, when I first saw this in the catalog, I was particularly concerned about the main color which is called "Grape Jelly." Being a bigger girl, I'm always a little self conscious about the purple. I love purple, but purple is also the color of Barney the Dinosaur and Grimace from McDonalds (for you old school folks) and this usually makes me hesitant to wear something called "Grape Jelly." So yesterday, when the weather was better I took the yarn out to my porch which is wear the light is usually the best and tried to capture a really accurate picture of these colors

I'll be the first to admit my photographic shortcomings, but I promise you I think this photo is pretty accurate, I think may be more accurate than the WEBS photo above. Now that I've seen the sweater completed at Stitches and have the yarn here I know the name is a complete misnomer and I adore the color. I suppose there are some purple tones there, maybe it is a bit of a purplish-red but it's definitely no "Grape Jelly." If it were up to me it would have been a Merlot, I'd like that a lot better. As far as texture goes I agree this is definitely not the normal wooly-texture I would expect from a fair isle sweater. The gauge is 5 sts. to the inch and the yarn is way, way softer and actually a lot more light weight than I would have expected. But I kind of like that and hopefully when I'm knitting it and have it done I still will. We shall see as time progresses I hope to start this one soon (the holiday knitting must end eventually after all) so I will have some more color & progress photos then.