Wednesday, February 21, 2007

A fuzzy victory

The angora scarf is done!



Pattern: Gossamer Shell Scarf from One Skein Wonders
Yarn: Fleece Artist hand-dyed Peter Rabbit (70% angora, 20% nylon, 10% wool)

and I've also got a skein in a green mix that I'm debating on doing another one in:

(image deleted)

One skein was the perfect amount for this project, I used up the entire thing and the scarf was just shy of the magic 60 inches number, somewhere around 58 inches I think. It was a bit niggley at first, but once I had all the yarn overs memorized it went up pretty quickly. The varigations in the yarn showed up really well in the waviness of this scarf. My one suggestion though would be to try and bind off on a pattern row---my finished end isn't as scallopped as my cast on end, but maybe that's just cuz I bound off too tight--I was hell bent on having NO yarn to spare. Here it is draped over a window for a better look at the pattern itself:



This pattern actually took a little longer than anticipated, mostly because frequent stops were a necessity with all that angora. I'd knit a few rows and then be sneezing for an hour, so the jury's still out on whether I'm actually allergic to angora or not. Odds are good since I'm pretty much allergic to all animals, I just force myself to suffer through. But hard to say, could be just that so much fuzz always seemed to be up my nose. Wearing it garners kind of the same results, when you take it off you wonder which cat made a nest of your coat when you weren't looking.

I had a wow, duh moment yesterday when I was shown a new tip: after you've cast something on and are about to knit your first row, knit with both the yarn and the tail from the cast on for a few stitches. That way when your project's done it's one less strand to weave in, and you can just snip it. Genius! I'll have to try that for everything now, and see how it goes.

I tore out those fleece artist socks last night and started fresh with a new sock pattern. My original idea to knit "one bad" and then "one good" seems pretty silly in retrospect, so I'm going to try actually sizing those babies to my feet. I like having at least one "little" project on the go (otherwise I feel like I'm never accomplishing anything!) so until I find something I like better, I guess for now it is grudgingly, those socks. I hesitate to start the angora mittens, given that there might be an exzema attack in my future if I do. Gah this sudden yarn-allergy development is a bit of a bummer.

Though it doesn't seem to bother Archie at all.

2 comments:

Sarah said...

Thanks for stopping by my blog. I hope we can encourage each other on through the Flair knit - which yarn did you buy? My finger is hesitating over the buy button for the Blue Sky but then I'm worried I might not like my version of the finished object so I'm still tempted to go for something cheaper!

Reckless Glue said...

Yay! --a flair-buddy!

I actually bought Mission Hills 1824 which is a 100% superwash merino. It's very soft, I think it was a good choice (I am bound by availability here, and Mission Hills is Canadian brand...)---I definitely chose it since it was a cheaper option (so it cost me 80$ instead of the $150 it likely would have...)I'm kind of debating on what size to do though *and* I also want to make it longer which I'm not really sure how to do yet. I swatched it last night and need to go buy some bigger circs this weekend, so hopefully I'll have at it then!
I can't wait to see your progression on it!