fuchsia swagger

I love Noro yarn. I pretty much feel like you can never go wrong. With any of it. I've heard people say that it isn't soft enough, but if you've used it as much as I have, you know it gets softer. And the colors hold up, it's high quality stuff.

Recently I've noticed that they have some solid and subtly striped yarn, which is a nice change up from the all-colorful, all-the-time thing. On the Autumn 2011 Triangle Yarn Crawl, I saw this fuchsia Noro and had to, had to, had to have it. Had to. The shop had a pair of fingerless mitts as a shop sample (in a different yarn), but my friend Meg decided that we could use this yarn to make that pattern, so I bought the yarn. Meg then realized that that pattern was like $6.50. Cannot do it. Cannot, cannot, cannot. BUT she suggested the Karin wristwarmers, and I loved them just as much.

I put the yarn in my stash and forced myself to finish some other projects before getting started. Along the way, I picked up some fuchsia Lion's Brand that I thought would make a nice accompanying cowl. It's no perfect match, but it goes alright.

Fingerless gloves pattern: very fun to knit. This was the first time that I really used a chart, and it wasn't nearly as intimidating as I thought it would be. I love the way it turned out. This yarn exhausted my hands, probably because it has cotton in it. Still, totally worth it for the final result.

Cowl: I cast on 24 and knit every stitch until it was the length I wanted, then I seamed it together. Eh. The look is fine, but I do hate this yarn. When I first started knitting, I tried (and failed) to knit a poncho with it. I thought it was just a rookie mistake or something, but no, it's awful. It slides and bunches and is very frustrating. Probably won't use it again. Unless there's some epic project that requires it.

Hooray for holiday knitting!