As for a new finished project - presenting the Color Me Pretty Scarf, designed by Elena Nodel:
For the speedy knitter - and the knitter who doesn't dink around on-line in sewing and knitting groups on Facebook and Ravelry, this could have probably been finished a WHOLE lot faster. I, however, want to apparently prove that I'm as slow as they come....and it took me a good month or more to work on it. People often think sweaters are a lot of work, and they can take on that whole "Will I EVER finish this????" train of thought, but scarves are a whole other story for me. I love the result, and my daughter thoroughly enjoyed it (and not just for looks, for realz...she was in the bike trailer for two different trips, and people, Bend, OR, hasn't exactly been sunshine and sweaty days lately!) and received compliments on it while we were out and about today, admired at both the chiropractor and the library, aha!
Elena Nodel designs some of my most favorite patterns for children - she does great work in writing them and designing them. She is honestly so super nice, too. I have worked with her on several occasions, between choosing yarn and asking pattern questions. She has her hand in many crafting pots, so, she's a busy lady, but she takes time out to help out! Also, she has enlisted the help of another woman, Jan Harvey, who helps with her blog and answering pattern questions in the Ravelry group, Colour Adventures.
As for this particular pattern, it's written super well, and it's an easy one, relatively speaking. If one can get past thinking color work is HARD work, THEN it's easy cheese cream pie. It does get tedious when I have to untwist two balls of yarn every other round, and I'm not great at knitting continental/picking my yarn, so, I only did that in particular rounds - where the color change was every other stitch.
As for my happiness with my final product, I do wish I hadn't sized up two needle sizes for the color work; I wish I'd only gone up one, as the width difference is too much for me. I'm a looser knitter, so, I had to size down two sizes for the main scarf, in the first place - to a size 4 needle. That seems to be the needle size for me to get about 5.5 spi with worsted/DK weight yarn. Also, I used Colour Adventures yarn for my project, and Elena, besides being awesome at pattern designing, also does great work with yarn dyeing. The overall outcome is great, though, and it should grace her neck for a few years.
I used her yarn in these other projects, too, one being the sweater to match the lovely scarf (hat to come later, aha!) and one being her Magical sweater:
Anyway, it's a lovely pattern, but I'm glad it's done - it was the never-ending scarf, and I've now happily moved on to a new project, the Sweet Poppy sweater - for this, I will use Colour Adventures in the colorway Watercolours. The orange yarn in the picture is Madelinetosh - for some Nozky leg warmers I will also soon knit up.
A last few glimpses of her CMP scarf, which she just loves and doesn't have to hound me about finishing any longer, LOL:
love it that you knit!
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