Noropalooza

Wry Face, Summer 2005
7" x 5", Noro Kureyon wool yarn, crocheted, wet-felted


I can't believe it's been so long since I last wrote here. I've been trying to take care of myself for awhile, staying home as much as possible and taking care of my own life-stuff I've neglected for too long. In addition to taking care of business-y things, I played a bit, too.

I am on a Noro binge right now, falling in love with it all over again -- Kureyon, Silk Garden, Iro, Blossom. I'm trying to resist others, but have acquired a few skeins of the new Aurora...I'm doomed. The budget's doomed. I must sell more books. To buy more yarn.









Basket of Noro I Like Looking At
Iro, Silk Garden, Kureyon - a teeny, tiny fraction of my embarrassingly large (but beloved) Noro stash



So...what have I been doing with the Noro? Besides just looking at it and dreaming of knitterly delights, I am first fighting mightily with that pathological line of thinking that causes many of us knitters to hoard stash and not use it because:

1. It was so expensive, I can't use it for anything but the Most Perfect Project.
2. It is too beautiful to use for anything but the Most Perfect Project.
3. This must be used for a sweater but I won't make one until I lose some weight.
4. It might be discontinued and I might not be able to get any more of that kind, color, etc.
5. There will be a yarn shortage someday and I will not be able to get any more of any kind of yarn ever.

(#5 correlates well with one of the reasons for hoarding spinning fibers - when all the yarn in the world disappears, I will still be able to make some!)

When I worked through the above and reminded myself it's only yarn, I started experimenting with various ways of knitting with Noro, mostly Kureyon, some Silk Garden. Haven't touched the Iro yet. So here are the results of this week's play (this post could have been called Scarf-O-Rama instead of Noropalooza!):





Silk Garden Squares
This is just a one ball scarf, inspired by those Noro purses I made a couple of weeks ago, pictured in my last post I think. I just made the sections much smaller and kept on going until I used up the entire ball. It makes a cute little cravat-size scarf and I knitted the entire thing a week ago Saturday, during my eye-doctor appointment and a long stitch'n'bitch session at Riverwools, my LYS.











Two-color Kureyon Scarf
#150 and #166
From Last-Minute Knitted Gifts, I believe - I saw a reference to this somewhere online and several versions of the scarf, but don't have the book. The pattern is "mistake rib" and calls for a multiple of 4st + 3. Each row is K2, P2, until the last 3 st, then K2, P1. Knit 2 rows from one ball, then 2 from the other. I used 10.5 dp needles and CO 27 st.








Two-color Kureyon Scarf
#147 and #138
I generally like long scarves, wrapped around the neck with one end flung over the shoulder. However, these 2-color scarves are on the short side and adore being bunched about the neck with a fat knot and the two ends showing off all their lovely colors right there on your chest.









Diagonal Knit Scarf
Kureyon #154
10.5 sp
I cast on 1 st, increased to 3, then started increasing 2st every other row, knitting across the rows between, until I got to 30st.
Then on every other row, I inc1 at the beginning, dec1 at the end. Make it as long as you like and when you're ready to finish it, just start decreasing 2st every other row.

This scarf seems to want fringe or loops or something on the ends, so it's not quite finished.









Also Not Finished, but Almost....
Here is a wider scarf, which is also going to be longer than the others. I'm doing it in seed stitch (my Favorite Stitch), alternating one row each of Silk Garden #205 (pinks and purples, hints of blue) and Lamb's Pride Worsted in the glorious color Wild Violet.










.....and also On the Needles, a Two-Color Scarf in Silk Garden.

I'm using another ball of #205 and #203, which is greens and blues. On all the scarves I've been using size 10.5 needles.





And finally, I'm topping off my Noropalooza with a Kureyon Haiku:

Colors unfolding
Pleasing juxtaposition
Alas! a damn knot.

Crisis Needlefelting

Hopefully, this will be my last posting with the word "crisis" in the title! Mom is doing better and I'm trying to regroup with more time for myself.

In addition to the easy-pattern knitting I was doing while at Mom's, I would come home and be so stressed I couldn't do much more than sit and poke a needlefelting needle into pretty hand-dyed wool.




The first thing I did was take this oddly-shaped vessel (needlefelted, then wet felted) I did awhile back and add needlefelted spirals to it.









Then I made a bunch of those spirals:

















And then I started needlefelting over these smooth black river rocks:


Needlefelting over rocks requires even more attention than regular needlefelting which requires a lot so you don't do serious puncture-wound damage to your hands. You have work kind of sideways and much more slowly. It was actually a very nice meditative exercise.






I then wet felted the wrapped rocks, so that the wool snugged up tightly.














I also made a two small vessels, both of which I finished by wet-felting after forming them with the needles.













This one is very tiny, about 2.5 inches high, and quite thin. It was more of an experiment in the technique and I'd make future vessels like this a bit thicker. But I really am pleased with how this came out, the arrangement of color and line resonate with my being and it is much closer to the vision I have of the sort of art I want to make.






And finally, here are the bags I knitted from the Cornelia Tuttle Hamilton Noro Revisited book.
The first is in Kureyon and the second is in Cherry Tree Hill Potluck - bulky, I think. I didn't like the part where the sewing comes together and so I needlefelted one of those spirals over the spot on both sides. I do like the way they turned out. I'm thinking of doing another and felting the whole thing....