Sasha Knits!

Pattern: Noro Striped Scarf
Yarn: Wisdom Yarns Poems #172 & #576 (2 balls of each)
Needles: Us7 / 4.5mm
Finished Dimensions: 4″ x 84″ / 10cm x 214cm
Started: June 12, 2009
Finished: June 22, 2009

I’m so glad to finally have this scarf finished.  It took me a great amount of willpower to slog through the final thirty or so inches of 1×1 ribbing.  I had to work on it a few stripes at a time to keep my wrist from giving out on me and to preserve my sanity.  Pain and agony aside, I’m mostly satisfied with the final result and I think the recipient will appreciate and enjoy it.

I can’t say I was entirely pleased with the Wisdom Yarns Poems.  It is a spongy and consistent one-ply wool that is pleasant enough to knit with, but there were some major issues that came up.  The first was the fact that the darker colors in the yarn bleed like crazy, especially the blues.  Both my fingers and the bamboo needles I was using ended up blue on multiple occasions.  I will have to be extra careful when I wash the scarf to make sure that the brighter colors aren’t muddied and that I get as much of the excess dye out as possible.  I don’t want it to get put away and never used because it made the wearer’s neck blue!  Secondly, there were some pretty major inconsistencies between balls of identical dye lots in each colorway, making it impossible for me to completely hide where I switched to a new ball during my knitting.  Color transitions and durations were quite different from ball to ball. If I decide to purchase more of this particular yarn, which is unlikely at this point, I will limit it to one-skein projects only.

Now that I have the first of my planned Christmas projects out of the way, I can focus primarily on my practice Clapotis again.  I have a shawlette design kicking around in my head and we’re in desperate need of a new bathroom rug around here, so I will probably end up distracted at some point.