Oh yes, I have found a new love. Love at first sight, it was.

What’s this? I can hear you thinking. Mom in love? Who is it? Someone tall, dark, handsome…. ?

Actually, it’s something thin, stretchy and brightly colored. It’s Cascade Yarns Fixation, an incredibly cool, stretchy, mostly-cotton-but-with-elastic yarn.

You will remember I picked up some in lime green, turquoise and hot pink last Saturday at Tangle. I decided to knit a swatch in various colors just to see how it was to work with. Usually swatching is one of my least favorite things to do. But this time I swatched and swatched and swatched with different color combinations and different stitches, until I finally decided I’d better stop swatching and actually decide what to knit while I still had some yarn left to knit with. The picture is my swatch. The saturation is not far off. The colors are really bright. Click for the big version.

I have, since getting to know my new love, become incredibly inspired by the “Color Socks” section of Socks Socks Socks. Three colors of this yarn, I’m thinking, are just too few…

OK. Who am I kidding? I’m like a junkie with a major jones on, and I need my fix. Now.

I ran to Tangle in Lake Oswego as soon as I could today after work and grabbed up the two colors I hadn’t picked up on Saturday — a light blue and a peachy pink. More! I cried to Alice, the dealer shop owner, as I lay twitching at her feet. I must have more!

Not to worry, Alice told me. There are many more colors being shipped on Friday. She promised to call when they arrived. Purple is coming! And more greens! And mixed colors!

I can see why this stuff is called fixation. I’m warning you fellow knitters… put this on your needles at your own risk! You can’t stop at one!

My pocketbook might be in serious trouble.

As I’ve been promising, this is a pic of the Mermaid socks for E. The one on the left is the toe flattened out to show that the spirals go all the way to the end.

I’m kinda proud of that effect, actually. Remember that the pattern I’m sort of using is for a top-down sock, so I’m knitting it backward.

I’m also rather taken with the way that the colors in the Mermaid yarn are swirling in the opposite direction of the pattern spiral. It will be interesting to see if that continues as I work my way up the foot.

If I can get myself interested in working on it, that is. I like them, but I’m going to like them better finished. For some reason I’m feeling uninspired by them. I keep promising myself that I’ll knit mermaid socks at lunch. Today I forgot to take them with me to work. Again. When I got home, they glared balefully at me. Tomorrow, I promised them. Tomorrow, for sure!

And this is the progress on the shirttail sweater. I’m just about ready to start the decreases for the neckline in the front. This picture is the back. You can see the two front pieces off to each side.

The pic is a little blurry because Moo Cow reach up with her paw and tried to pull the left front off the counter just as I snapped. And then the camera battery, which I had been nursing along as I took the other pictures, gave up the ghost.

It’s not easy working with any fiber art while living with a fiber-obsessed cat. The other two cats don’t care about my yarn. Kidd can sit in my lap while I knit and never even look at my work. If Moo sat in my lap while I knitted, she’d eat the fruits of my labor. One emergency yarn-ectomy was enough.

OK. I’m going to try to work on the sweater (I want to wear it this fall, after all) and the mermaid socks.

But… many new colors are coming….