ISE6 goodness!

Oh! Looky what came in the mail today!!




Look at this awesome scarf my pal made for me!! It's super soft merino and a gorgeous offwhite color (compared to my offwhite duvet cover...). Plus she sent that cute little bag of stitch markers (which she made herself!) which have very spring-like, good-karma messages on them, a funny book about cats, and a nice long letter introducing herself! I adore the scarf--squishy heaven!! Yay!!! This package totally made my day, which I needed after having another thesis-induced meltdown yesterday (more on that later). Thank you sooo much, dogyarnfun!!




I cast on for a sideways-knit-vest using the Evilla artyarn that arrived last week--those will be vertical stripes. I forgot to take pictures of the skeins and handwound the balls so it's hard to see much of the color variation. I'm very excited about it!

Scarf midpoint

Whoever it was that said that knitting a scarf is all about endurance was right. Lordy these things get boring. I'm glad I never tried knitting one when I was first learning to knit--I surely would have given up the craft entirely.

But I am plugging away on my ISE6 scarf. I swore I was picking a lacey stitch and then after I knit a while I noticed it was all squishy and 3D, but by then I'd knit more than I could bear to rip out. I think I'm about half done--it's around 2.5 feet. The pattern is the cloverleaf eyelet cable (rib) from Barbara Walker's first treasury:




ETA: I forgot to say--I bound off a secret project this week that was very enjoyable. It's a gift, so I can't write about it, but if you are on Ravelry it's in my notebook, waiting to be blocked (of course).

ISE 6

I started some swatches for my ISE 6 pal.



The bottom one is the actual color! I picked up some Lang MerinoSeta (70% merino, 30% silk). It's dreamy soft to the touch. The store I was shopping at let me use my loyalty points to pay, so I splurged and bought 6 balls (150m, 50g each) so I wouldn't have to freak out about running out!

It also meant I had enough to swatch like mad--usually I get a little worried that I'm overswatching and wearing out the yarn if it's a strandy-splitty one like this is. Yes, that is possibly the worst excuse you've ever heard for why someone doesn't swatch enough. Heh.

I haven't decided which pattern to use--I love the squishy berries (a) but I feel like a spring scarf should go more for lace and less for squishy? I love the waves that form in (b). I did (c) mostly because Barbara Walker claimed the back side looked like elephants!! I kind of see that. I'm not so excited about the parentheses look on the front side, though!

ISE6!

ISE6 signups are open! I'm hosting again--it was such fun being involved last time!

I have some very exciting news about which I'll blog tonight.