Nympheas (1)

I mentioned the other day that I'd started a Nympheas scarf (isn't Mimi's  photography great, by the way?) but wasn't happy with it.  This is the cause of the discontent:

Can you see how the yarn's pooling?  I think it will continue with the diagonal striping and blobbing if I was to carry on as is.  Changing needle size or adding or subtracting a pattern repeat might help as well, but I like the size as the pattern's written.  Usually I don't mind pooling, especially in socks, but I'm not liking it in this scarf, so I'm going to frog it and start again.

Which yarn to use though?  I brought down three possible skeins:

From left to right:

Natural Dye Studio Angel 4ply/Sock/Sport.  100g, 360m.  70% Baby Alpaca, 10% Cashmere, 20% Silk.

The Bear Necessities TBN sock yarn.  100g, approx 345m.  70% British Blue Faced Leicester, 30% Nylon.

Natural Dye Studio Unicorn.  100g, 400m.  70% Baby Llama, 20% Cashmere, 10% Silk (from memory - it was a 'mystery' fibre yarn).

The pink NDS is solid.  I think the Bear Necessities will stripe (and I think I'd prefer to make it into socks).  I'm fairly certain the NDS Unicorn will pool, much like the pink/mauve/green has (that's also Unicorn), so I'm going to go for the solid pink as a. the fibre content is more suited to a scarf than socks and b. I haven't got a pink scarf.

I've got one last round of double crochet and then a round of crab stitch to do on DD1's stripey blanket, a few ends to weave in and then it'll be finished.  After that I'll wind the pink yarn into a ball and cast on Nympheas for a second time.  My St Brigid is in hibernation at the moment as I'm not in a cabling mood and I can only work on the Rock Island shawl for short amounts of time as it's patterned on every row and after a couple of pattern repeats I start to make mistakes.

Before all that happens though, I'm off shopping.  For a new camera.  I've been saving up my Tesco clubcard vouchers with the intention of putting them towards a new camera and the Clubcard summer exchange includes cameras.  I also got a 'spend £40 get a discount of £6' voucher when I did some shopping last week.  In fact, I've got two of those - one expires 20 May, the other 27 May.  About the clubcard exchange, you don't have to have a £5 voucher to double it up to £10 - you can combine smaller denomination vouchers (i.e. £2.50, £1.50 and two 50p ones etc) into £5 groups and double those - something I didn't know until yesterday!  I've got £24 total of vouchers, so can double £20 worth to give me a total of £44, add on the £6 to make £50 of vouchers and then include my 10% staff discount and I can get a decent-enough camera for £4-£14 hard cash, which is what I call a bargain.

I'll let you know which camera I decide to buy.  I think I'm going to go to the big Tesco in Ipswich as that seems to have a better electrical department than the Colchester one - fortunately, we live halfway between the two towns.

It's nice to be going out to buy something just for me.  I'm trying to watch the pennies at the moment and save everything I can as DD1 will need a new clarinet next year if she's to continue her music studies (and she's rather good at it) which isn't going to be cheap.

I shall catch up again soon :)