The First Warm Day of May

There was sunshine today.  I went out to look at wildflowers.  Lots of violets blooming, and strawberries, and there's a bunch of grape hyacinth down the hill from the house.  And I didn't see any snow!


I finally caved and got a skein of the ruffle yarn that has been so popular amongst knitters lately.  I have made a scarf, which is being modeled here by the wonderful Miss Chenille.

The yarn is Marina Multi by Rozetti in the Galaxy colorway.  Loved how it knitted up, didn't enjoy knitting it.  This stuff is a pain to work with.  You have to spread ite out as you knit, inserting the needle into the loops along the top to make your stitches.  You're basically looping the loops together, so stitch size is dependent on the size of the loops and not the needles you used.  I followed the pattern on the label for the yarn which called for size 9 straight needles.  I recommend using circulars, if you can.  With the straight needles the stitches kept wanting to come off the needles and the needles kept getting caught in the already worked ruffles of the scarf.  Definitely a yarn you need to watch your stitch count with.  Only eight stitches to do the scarf but do to the tendency for the stitches to fall off the needle I kept losing stitches and having to stop and find them again.  I also at one point picked up an extra stitch.  At least with so few stitches it's easy to tell right away if you've got the wrong number.

Overall I say avoid it if you can, but if you really want to make a ruffle scarf (or need a quick knit for a mother's day present) now would be the time to do it.  With the current popularity everybody and their mother is making this stuff and their are plenty of options out there.  You're bound to find one you like.

On Friday I bound off the Spring Tulips Shawl and today I blocked it.  I must say it came out quite beautiful.

Here's a picture of it before blocking.

And a close up of the pattern.

And here's how it looks after blocking.

It stretched farther than I thought it would and is a wonderful size.  It 56" along the top edge and wearing it the point hits right at my butt.  Very comfortable and delicate feeling.  I'm really happy with how it turned out.  You can see the tulips a little better in person, and on the wrong side, and when it's held up to the light.  Overall that part turned out better then I expected, you can definitely see the tulips much better then while it was on the needles.

Originally I was going to write up the pattern but the more I think about it the more work it sounds like.  I didn't keep any notes while I worked on it, just have the chart for the tulip and the number of stitches and rows for each rectangle.

I should note an interesting thing happened while I was working on the triangles along the top edge.  The triangles are all almost identical in their color placement.  Seemingly completely random color placement in the whole shawl and then it patterns along the top.

While blocking the shawl I also blocked the elephants parts that have been in my knitting bag for months.

I want to take a picture of this one sitting in the flowering plum while it's in full bloom, and the flowers are starting to open on the tree.  Time to get this elephant together and without any shawls hanging over my head I should have no problems getting this done.  Unless I keep procrastinating on it because I don't like sewing.

Aren't there like sewing gnomes or something that will do it for me if I leave a bowl of milk out, or something like that.  I suppose if there were my cat would catch and kill them before they got any work done.