Something Old & Something New

I am pretty well a slug when it comes to taking pictures of things, but since I'm sort of involved in packing up a lot of stuff (especially things that qualify as winter wear... like... say scarfs) I managed to snag pictures of some older FOs that I'd never gotten around to photographing.

First that Clapotis Scarf I was working on in WM yarn. I loooooooveee it. Its prettier in person. Seriously. And completely my colors. On the downside, wearing it like a scarf around my neck activates my "AAAAHHHH WOOL GET IT OFF GET IT OFF" instincts somewhat (somewhat equaling - I can last with it for about fifteen minutes before I start scratching). Which sucks. A lot. But its wide enough to wear like a mini-shawl and pretty that way. Proof all over again that animal fibers that touch my neck are bad, m'kay? So no, self, even if the rest of you is just fine with it you're still not making any wool sweaters.

Not that I could wear one in Austin anyway.

My most favoritest scarf that I made is this one - it was the first thing to ever come off the loom and its the awesomeness. Also, desipte being made from panda silk (which does contain a percentage of wool) it doesn't inspire my "GAH WOOL!" reaction. I am not sure if its the low amount or the nature of woven fabric but there you are. Its full of mistakes and has ugly, crappy selvages, but the color matches everything and its soft and warm.

There is also more recent stuff to show & tell:

My Kai Mei socks from last month. These won me free yarn in the April Sock Innovation KAL which is so awesome. Also, the socks are pretty nifty too. I'm passing on this month's KAL since they're doing the Kai Mei pattern (or Pomatomas... which I actually want to do but don't have the presence of mind of deal with this month), but I'll probably do one of the KALs next month with the prize yarn. :)

And finally, I finished this scarf just last week! It was my Mom's present for Mother's Day. It is crazy soft & delicious - bamboo & malabrigo lace merino. Mmm.... I hemstitched the ends, which was new and probably not done correctly (it is holding together just lovely and looks fine to me though... so whatever. Its a design feature).

Steam pressing made a world of difference on this one also. So far I've just been pulling stuff off the flip and giving it a wash, but I pulled out the iron on this one and it really cleaned up the selvages and evened out the weave. Even before that it was a pretty big improvement over what I've been weaving, but the pressing... really polished it up. I will have to do this for all my woven stuff now.

There is a bunch of stuff on the needles right now also - two sweaters (because I'm weird and yeah I've been afraid of starting one so of course rather than just doing a sweater I'm working on two of them now) some socks that I'm not completely sure about (Panda Soy is... interesting yarn, shall we say... more on that when I've gotten far enough to decide if I'm finishing or frogging) and I'm working on a woven band for my laptop bag.

Also there is carbonized bamboo on the wheel that may want to become a Whisper cardigan and yellow blended superwash merino that I am sort of not loving as much as I want to that was going to be socks. It may be going into the pause file soon. Perhaps I will get around to finishing that SW Merino/Tencel finally instead. Or else I will ignore both projects and go dye up some more Brown Sheep superwash. Because that makes awesome sock yarn. Seriously. And I like spinning it.