Mostly, I love Noro because nobody does color like they do…rich, vibrant, deep, saturated, luxurious color.

Designing With Noro

I was reviewing the latest Noro design book – Knit Noro Accessories 2

I was realizing how difficult it can be to successfully work with vibrant, multi-colored yarns.  From the cover photo, which I found drab and uniteresting and then as I started paging through the projects in this new book, I was thinking that most of the designers had no idea what they were doing.  I was starting to think, there would only be a few hat designs worth making in the entire book.

But I continued to look and it’s clear that Noro put all the good designs toward the end of the book!

Jacqueline van Dillen’s Brickstich Scarf in Silk Garden creates a sumptuous scarf in beautiful colors:

Lisa Craig has a rich red and pink cowl also done in Silk Garden that I think is fantastic:

I was thrilled to see that Charles Voth had a gloriously interesting and beautiful scarf, called Tuck Stitch Scarf (I will definitely be making this) – also done in Silk Garden:

Two other great designs are an Art Deco Wrap by Cheryl Murray and a great Peruvian Chullo hat by Matthew Shrank.

Definitely a book I’m glad to have in my library!

Current Knitting

I’m actively working on two projects at the moment…trying to finish the Easton Logo blanket and also trying to test out a design using the Pinterest lace stitch I mentioned in the last blog entry.

Who would have believed adding 15″ borders to a blanket would have taken so long?  I decided I wanted the finished blanket to be 70″ x 90″, so that it would be the suggested size for a single/twin bed.

And despite seemingly endless knitting, I’m not even finished with the first long border.

For the Broomstick Lace Ripple stitch, Bill Miner gave me the clue I needed to get me started when he wrote in comments:

Joe, just read your last post. I did a google search of Eyla Orgu Sedef and found a U-tube video showing this crochet stitch. Unfortunately, its in what I think is Turkish which I don’t understand. The video is very clear and with your talents you may be able to figure it out.

The following video shows in a  clear enough way how to do this stitch…

so I’m trying it on a larger scale with 340 stitches.

We’ll see how it works out!