robknits: Knitting in Texas winters

While folks here are complaining about the coldest winter in years (yeah, right. The temperature has ranged from 48-78 during the day, and down into the 30s some nights), I am enjoying my knitting. I will have to remember this during the summer. I have completed 3 repeats of the MoonGarden Wrap -- and Readers, please note, the picture in the last blog entry is from the pattern, not from my own work. This is my current MoonGarden Wrap. Like all lace projects, it behaves if I count the stitches between the markers to make sure I haven't lost a yarnover or 3. And the lace design will show only after blocking the finished shawl.

The Featherweight has been in a time-out, but I will get back to it to finish the front band. Then I need to decide whether to tackle that huge goof in front or the sleeves next.

And... ignoring all previous acknowledgments that I should work on one project at a time, I fell for a knitalong (KAL, for you nonkitters) -- the monthly Feb 2010 KAL for the Sockknitters Anonymous Group on Ravelry. I usually read their KAL announcements, and decide not to participate. They choose a designer and a technique or two. This time, though, they got me. One of the options this time was to choose an underappreciated pattern -- a sock pattern that had fewer than 15 instances on Ravelry. To my surprise, a pattern I liked by a major sock pattern designer had only 4 projects, so I jumped into another new project. I will be knitting Wendy Johnson's sock pattern Sign of Spring. The Nanner socks I just finished were also designed by Wendy. I started Sign of Spring with the Lisa Souza Sock! yarn that I have had in the stash for a while now, in the beautiful Mother of Pearl colorway:

Now I am not too sure of that choice. I could use the Dream in Classy Smooshy in Wisterious (a bit of that shows at the top of the picture of the Sock!), or the lovely teal String Theory (below left)or even some solid Froehlich Blauband (below right, and the color is a bit lighter and clearer than the picture shows.)

At the moment I am leaning toward either sticking with the Sock! Mother of Pearl or using the solid Froehlich. Whaddya think?

Another little detail I noticed: after years of taking off in my own direction when knitting, considering the pattern merely a set of suggestions, I realized that several times recently I have chosen yarn for a project that is in the same color as in the pattern. For example:

Wendy Johnson's Nanner socks on the left, mine on the right:

If you take a look at the last entry in this blog, you will see the dark MoonGarden Wrap picture from the pattern, and my dark yarn next to it.

And finally, we have, on the left, the image of top-down cardigan I want to make from the pattern, and the Brooks Farm Yarn I bought to make it with:

Hmmm. Now I always argued that making a sweater in the same color as shown in the pattern didn't necessarily show a lack of creativity -- odds are that's why the pattern appealed to us in the first place, if we like the color. But 3 out of 3 recent choices? Uh oh. At least I am not planning on making the Sign of Spring socks in blue. Maybe I'd better stick with the Mother of Pearl.