Cotton Candy

Last week, I mentioned the project currently on my needles. It hasn't, unfortunately, made much progress since that time.

However, here is the Cotton Candy scarf (my name for it). The yarn is Handmaiden Yarns, Angel Hair (70% kid mohair and 30% nylon), in the Autumn colourway. The pattern is from Victorian Lace Today, the first pattern in the book. One thing about this book, the patterns don't really have names. This one is entitled "Scarf or shawl with a center pattern". It's classified as easy lace and it is. The center pattern is pretty mindless; I do, however, find myself missing the final yarnover on the row more often than not.

When I first went through this book, I realized there were a number of patterns I could finally use this yarn for. I've had two skeins of it in my stash for a couple of years now and it's about time to use them, don't you think?

Another small project I've been working on off and on for the last while is Cat Bordhi's toe up socks. Remember? Well, here's the experimental sock today.

I'm not sure if I'll make a second one. It would make a good pair of socks to wear in my slippers this winter, but... It was more of an experiment than anything else. My conclusions? Well, I do like the heel on this sock. Mostly. If I did it again, I would, as she suggests, begin the heel stitch lower down on the bottom of the foot. I find that, on this sock, the heel stitch is a little high on the heel (see where the arrow is? see how it bulges slightly there?). That could be because the foot is a little too long; I'm not sure. The heel looks good, though. The toe was interesting to work. It starts with a provisional cast on, done over two needles, working each part of the toe, top, then bottom, separately. It sounds confusing, I know, but her directions are so clear and so easy to follow. Before you know it, you have a toe box done and you're flying up the foot.

On this sock, I've also used a tubular cast off. I'm really liking this cast off for toe-up socks.

That's pretty much all the knitting I've done this week. The temperatures around here have been hovering around the 35-38C mark (that's about 100F), too hot to do much knitting. Today is going to be another hot one, so not much knitting will get done today either. I will, however, be pickling some more cherries. Yes, pickling. They're delicious! And John wants more!