Blocking, and old projects

Well, my very first non-scarf, knitted apparel project is blocking. I was hoping to finish it up today, but it's still drying, so I guess I'll have to wait a while longer. I'm pretty pleased so far though. It's turned out alright for my first full project, even with a radical change in yarn from the pattern specs and my own odd additions (the back's boring. What if I add some cabling there too?). It's been fun to figure out.

And just to catch up, here are some pics of the two scarves I completed this fall.

The first, where I learned things like:

• Wool/acrylic blends are going to pill (okay for a first project, and it's not too bad).
• Stockinette rolls up into the cutest little tube when you knit it.
• Okay, the tube's not so cute when you try to wear it and you didn't know that you'd need some other stitch on the sides so you didn't knit them, and steaming the sucker made it a little too flat and it still rolls on up.
• I don't really get crochet, but it's fun to make silly little flowers out of chains, and it doesn't really matter that no two are the same.
• I just love making up designs - this one owes the concept to a scarf I saw at Nordie's, only it's a different color, has no fringe, is wider, has different flowers, has only one color of flower, and has flowers only at the bottoms, or really is not much like it at all.

See rolling effect on right side - and that's with me carefully flattening for a picture. When I wear the thing, it's a total tube scarf. But I love it anyway.


Specs:

• Yarn: Lion Brand Woolease (Loden) and Lion Wood (Winter White).
• Pattern: made up, plain stockinette plus crochet flowers stitched on.
• Needles: size 8 circulars

Okay, and here's my cable scarf that I'm oh-so-proud of. Cabling's easy, see? Especially when there's only 1.

Oh, but don't count the rows in each cable please, I mighta lost track once or twice. Do you like the wing effect on the ends? I didn't, but I didn't realize till I'd done it that it was going to do that, and I considered decreasing on the other end when I finished the cable and started the garter stitch, but then the ends wouldn't match, and oh well. It has these cute little wings on each end ;-).

Specs:

• Yarn: Some Australian wool I found at Ben Franklin craft store in Redmond in a nice brown (darker than appears above).
• Pattern: made up, garter plus cable (see, garter edges, I learn!).
• Needles: size 8 circulars