I only ever make scarves, you know

I haven't been neglecting lace, either! A couple of months ago when Knitpicks introduced Gloss Lace, we ordered one hank of each colour to play with. (And one ball of each colour of Palette. The box it all came in is enormous and satisfying in the way that a new box of 64 crayons is satisfying, but more, because it's yarn.) That makes eight: Natural, Cypress, Mermaid, Port, Raisin, Sterling, Aegean, Chipotle. Whew. (They've since added four more colours, but I kind of still like the first eight best.)

The hanks are 440 yards each, which is awesome yardage for the price but not that much for a project, and it's heftier laceweight than I usually choose, so I dithered about them for a long time. Then I looked at Victorian Lace Today again.

Scarves, you guys.



This is the Scarf with Unwieldy Name from p. 100. When I stretch it out a bit to simulate blocking, it's two feet long; I've got 31g of yarn still to knit, out of 50g total. This means that unless I screw something up, I will have five feet of scarf at the end.

And then seven more to make!

The need for tweed

I've been knitting! Lots and lots! I've just also been distracted by delicious books, is all. Anyway. So I don't like knitting cables, right?

I asked my love interest what seasonally-inappropriate thing I could knit for him, and he suggested a scarf, black.

It took me a while to figure out how to knit a black scarf that was interesting enough to hold my attention without losing the pattern in the dark. After a couple of weeks of knitting a few inches and tearing them out and switching up the pattern and trying again unsuccessfully and casting it aside in frustration lather rinse repeat, I settled on Grumperina's "Shifting Sands" pattern. It has enough cables to be fiddly—ten on every right-side row—but is repetitive enough that I could watch Alias DVDs while knitting. The yarn is Silky Wool that's actually more charcoal than jet black, on 3.5mm needles; it took two and a half skeins to make a scarf six inches by six feet. I am ideologically opposed to fringe so I ignored that part of the pattern, and I'm pleased with the result.



Another thing! This is the "Tilly" scarf from A Fine Fleece, in Grignasco Tango (a.k.a. fake Felted Tweed). It's only three-quarters done, but I think it will be pretty awesome. I can't argue with anything about this pattern. Mirrored cables on either side! Little rolled edges! It's a bit wiggly and uneven because it is as yet unblocked, but I'll probably finish it soon.



Maybe I don't mind cables after all.