1) Blue proto-sock OTN ("On The Needles," for my non-knitting-blog-reading readers).
2) Noro sweater pieces awaiting assembly but being ignored because I have to do a shoulder seam next before I proceed with the arm seams and the side seams. I hate shoulder seams (and the fact that it's always overheated in the cats' room where I do my blocking and seam sewing, and that it's summer, and that I hate heat, and summer, and occasionally wish I lived in the far northern section of British Columbia, or, hell, even southern British Columbia. Vancouver, say).
There are other vague, knitting-like activities -- like a hot pink charity scarf OTN that I'm working on from time to time to keep my hands busy, and to use up the rest of the hot pink yarn not used in the Kitty Pi -- and a serious desire to make My So Called Scarf out of Malabrigo yarn.
I've shown you the Malabrigo before; this stuff is woolen opium. I'm still sitting on that black-purple "Paris Nights" colorway, but I wanted a quick knitting fix for my Malabrigo addiction. So, I order two skeins of the worsted in Jewel Blue from my eBay drug, er, yarn, dealer.
The problem was, when the yarn arrived, I was not completely enamored of its color. The eBay photo showed a more intense medium blue than the actual shade of blue - which is more white-to-ice-blue. I don't fault anyone with that; getting an accurate color from an online photo is difficult (and this particular yarn was kettle-dyed in a limited lot of ten, which lends itself to all sorts of color variations, etc.).
I kept the yarn and started working on the scarf, believing that I would Learn to Love the Yarn.
I do love the yarn. I love how it feels but, Dear Readers, I could not learn to love this color. It's wimpy. It's washed out. It's limp. It's.... It's... PASTEL for chrissakes.
I don't do pastels. I don't do fluff, flounces, lace, lettuce hems, ruffles or any other of that girly stuff. (2)
Part of being Unable to Love the Yarn was due to the pattern. I really like the stitch pattern. It's unique and shows off variegated yarn extremely well. There is even a whole flickr group with pictures of this scarf pattern.
Alas, as with many goals, there is a struggle. This particular stitch pattern is challenging to me because it causes me to hold my needles in such a way as to cause a more-than-usually painful bout of repetitive strain injury.
Nonetheless, I carry on because I love the pattern and I Will Make this Scarf Even if it Kills Me, which it just may, at that; and if I'm going to die from knitting-induced RSI, I want it to be from a yarn that makes me weak in the knees.
After all of this preamble, I offer you Malabrigo Chunky, three-ply superfine Merino wool, Colorway 242, Intenso.
Further bulletins as events warrant. I need to be alone with my yarn now.
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(1) [Alright - I've got footnotes appearing in the title now, for Pete's sake] Alluding, somewhat, to "Dear God, What About the Men?" from Twisty's blog, which I believe in turn alludes to "Dear God, What About the Children?", an all-too-frequent, ridiculous sound-bite, um, thing that I see in the media. I think. I love word games and references to obscure tidbits of information I find floating around out there. You know, out THERE. [Insert dismissive hand gesture here] That alleged "Real World" place. But I digress.
(2) Ok, my bathroom is pink, with white-rose shaped shower-curtain hooks, but that all started as a joke when my second husband left me and I Needed a Change.
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