Cotton MD Scarf & Chain Stitch Doodling

It's a beautiful day in Indiana today - this is the peaceful view from my back porch, where much spun yarn and felted pieces are dried on days such as this. Such a contrast to the terrible catastrophe unfolding along the Gulf Coast. I am acutely aware of my blessings these days and my heart just hurts when I contemplate the suffering and my head can barely encompass the magnitude. May all those people find peace and healing and strength.....

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On my mundane, carefree-in-comparison life:

We are down to the last four days of Wabash River Books - all books $1 and people are coming in to the shop and filling boxes. That's good. And it's sad, too. I haven't fully processed my feelings about this, but I do know that my life is filled with all sorts of wonderful things to do and be, that I'm still going to be selling books online, and that things pass through our lives and it's good to know when it's time to let go.

As for knitting, I've been working on another multidirectional scarf:









this one is in a thick and thin cotton w/nylon binder. Generally, I prefer to work in wool, but I just love the texture of this cotton - it's a handpainted yarn I get from Lotusblossom on eBay. It reminds me of Cherry Tree Hill Thick 'n' Thin, which is wool w/nylon binder. I've made shawls from both the wool and the cotton and they are favorites.

The interesting color and row direction effects of Iris Schreier's Multidirectional Scarf pattern are rather lost with this yarn, but I'm wondering if there will be a practical effect of the pattern that will prevent the cotton from growing, as most cotton scarves I've made seem wont to do. Of course, my daughter and the friend for whom I made cotton scarves LOVE the lengths to which they've grown.

I've also been working on a...well, I think it's going to be a scarf. I discovered that I can crochet while holding baby Sophia, but not knit. Not comfortably anyway! So I just started sort of doodling with chain stitch. Here's something I did with Noro Kureyon after torturing it into felting:






The beginning part is on the left bottom and I really like it very much.



Here is a close-up of that part:

As I continued though, I seemed to make shorter chains and got less freeform and more regular with each section. Also, the Kureyon made weird color juxtapositions, since I was sometimes crocheting down the side of the piece. In any case, this was an interesting experiment and I will probably wear it, as peculiar as it is.

Now I'm starting another doodle, this time with a little more planning, in Merino Style from KnitPicks.












This whole freeform chain thing is a tad tedious, because despite the randomness of the chains, I do have to stop and look at it and decide if it's balanced, etc., so it's anyone's guess if I'll actually finish this piece. I'm hoping that posting it here will give me some impetus to do so!