And Speaking of Spring - Look What Came

Twenty, count 'em 20 skeins of Classic Elite Mistral, DK-weight cotton-alpaca blend in the luscious dusty plum color, from a fellow Knitswap member who was kind enough to include the Classic Elite pattern too. In case you can't see it, the patterns are for ganseys in child to adult sizes, and a nice cabled cardi. There's a Norah Gaughan pattern from Knitter's that calls for this yarn. I had made it in Reynold Rio when the pattern first came out, 1994 I think it was, but the Rio cotton blend pilled so much I got disgusted and gave the sweater away. All that work, and you get a pilled sweater - grrr. I 'd rather spend more on the yarn up-front before I invest the time, and get a real quality yarn that won't pill under the arms or where the arms rest along the body, or from friction from a jacket. The Rio was really bad in that regard, but not as bad as other yarn that pilled while I was knitting with it. I won't name names, but when I mentioned what I was using for a pattern to an e-mail group, another member asked right away about how much pilling was I seeing. Sadly, the pilling diminishes my pleasure in wearing that garment, and it is a coat - a lot of money spent on that yarn and a lot of time, too. So I've taken to buying tried-and-true yarns instead of trying out new yarns, for the most part. I don't have a lot of time for knitting and I really do not want to buy single skeins to knit swatches to decide if a yarn will work or not. If major yarn manufacturers don't want to hear from knitters like me, who knits a lot for family and needs hard-wearing yarns for them, I'll keep on haunting the artisanal yarn sites and look for yarn made of sturdy fibers spun tightly enough to suit. If you know of a great yarn, please let me know? I'm dying to find the next Rowan Magpie and the next Classic Elite Tapestry (but like when it first came out; the later stuff falls apart fast).