Pattern: Lacy Serpentine Scarf, from Heartstrings Fiber Arts
Yarn: Handmaiden Sea Silk (70% silk, 30% Seacell), color Glacier.

First, the pattern. The scarf is knit lengthwise, which is perfect for the variegation of the yarn. My small swatch showed a little bit of pooling of the gold color, but knitting lengthwise solved this completely. The scarf is a fairly simple lace pattern – only three distinct pattern rows, you definitely get the hang of it after awhile. That didn’t prevent me from making a big mistake – I forgot to work one of the rows, as you can see here. I kind-of noticed on the flight back home, but was entirely too lazy to do anything about it.

The yarn. Sea Silk, you are:

1. Soft.
2. Drapey
3. Shiny.
4. Mucho awesome.

As Knitter’s Review pointed out, there’s very little seaweed in that Seacell – it’s mostly Tencel with 5% seaweed. But seriously, who cares? Tencel is hot hot hot these days (well, as hot as a fiber can be), and it’s shiny and soft and works for me. The yarn as a whole blocks out like a champ, and the end result is drapey as all hell.

Behold the miracle of blocking:

Yum. The colorway of the Sea Silk isn’t quite my thing, but I think that my mother will love it. It seems much less intense knitted up than it was in the skein. Also, the color striping is subtle enough that it doesn’t distract from the lace pattern.

One caveat about the yarn – frogging is somewhat dangerous. I ripped out a few rows when I noticed a mistake, and it was like literally watching the remaining scarf unravel before my eyes (at least before I could get all 303 stitches back on to the needle). Ok, perhaps that description of the situation is a bit extreme, but the yarn really is extremely slippery. I ended up frogging to the row before the mistake row, then unknitting, stitch by stitch, the (303 stitch!) row. Knitter beware!

The yarn + pattern worked out great – I have 18 grams (of a 100 gram skein) left over, so this is a great one-skein project for your Sea Silk. In fact, I wish that I had worked another pattern repeat, because I think that this scarf is going to stretch lengthwise (and therefore get skinnier and skinnier widthwise) with wear.

Overall, I consider this project a success! Rob even gives it the stamp of approval, where the stamp is actually a swig of beer.

Random

Houston weather == wacky. On Wednesday Houston hit record highs, for both the high and low temp – 83 and 70 degrees, respectively. Then Thursday, the apocalypse descended and it went from an early high of 71 down to the 40’s at 10am. Yes, you read that right – 10AM. Now the high is in the 50’s for the next few days. I’ve never seen so many worn handknits at the Houston Stitch+Bitch – everyone was taking advantage of the weather to wear their scarves and sweaters!

And last but definitely not least, Gilmore Girls hearts the yarn!

Turkey weekend was great – good food, good company, and plenty of r+r. However, my Target Wave Mittens remain unused – there was no snow! The temps were in the 50’s, boo. I was looking forward to some pretty snow and freezing cold. Last year there was a big snowstorm in PA, and we had to leave early (back to NJ to catch my flight the next morning). I have vivid memories of this because we were driving Rob’s old truck (which he then drove back down to TX), which had no climate control. It was an incredibly freezing cold two hour drive. Brr!

Rob’s brother’s wife (aka MC) taught herself to knit recently. She mentioned that she’d like to learn to make hats for holiday gifts, so I stepped up and taught her the basics of knitting in the round. We made mini-hats to practice joining in the round and working the crown decreases, and she’s now a hat-knitting champ! I’m probably going to send her a little learn-to-knit-more xmas package – I’d love to hear any ideas you have on beginning knitting supplies. I’m thinking that I’ll include the Stitch and Bitch book, which I used to teach myself how to knit back in the day.

An enormous amount of knitting was done this weekend. I’m really amazed at what a little speed knitter I was! I completed all but 6 rows of this scarf while I was away, the rest was finished last night. The pattern is the Lacy Serpentine Scarf from Heartstrings Fiber Arts. This photo gives the scarf more credit than it deserves – it’s still unblocked, and really does look like unblocked lace spaghetti. I’m using Handmaiden Sea Silk (that I bought for a 20% discount at Yarntopia at their crazy end-of-summer sale), which is awesome. It’s shiny and drapey and all that is good in a yarn. The scarf is blocking right now, so I’ll have a FO photo soon!