#though now that I've finally figured out how to crochet more than rectangles

[guardevoir]

Tour de Fleece, day... 17?

Same old, same old. I had such high hopes for a fun and interesting TdF and instead here I am, spinning endless bobbins of green.

At least it's productive, and really pretty too! But after coming up on 400g - roughly 14 ounces, close to a pound - of green sparkle bullshit, I'm about ready to move on to the next project.

... which will be 600 or 700g of plain grey merino

fuckin' sweater spins, folks.

[msbarrows]

Thinking that before I actually attempt an ambitious crochet project like making a shawl for my SIL that I should frog the green-and-white cotton yarn scarf I never finished, and use the yarn to experiment with the scarf pattern I'm eyeing up on Ravelry; see if I can figure it out enough to be confident I can do it before buying good (expensive, hand-dyed) yarn to use for a real thing. Have a yarn winder and an umbrella swift on their way to me, which'll make dealing with the yarn (including the skein hank of it I never got around to balling up manually) a lot easier to deal with.

The pattern looks pretty simple overall, it's just alternating different numbers of rows of mostly doubles or doubles-and-chain netting, worked in a triangular shape, with occasional trebles where needed to start/finish rows. I'll save attempting more ambitious patterns until once I'm more confident in my crocheting; I'd only just started using anything fancier than plain stitches or netting when I stopped having time for crochet. My biggest project back then was a thigh-length netting sweater to wear over tanks and so forth in summer; so basically just a bunch of rectangles joined together. It would have looked a lot better if I'd used a smaller grade of yarn; it was kind of bulky looking for warm weather wear.

I've also gone ahead and ordered a skein hank of the silk-linen yarn, in a lovely variegated blue colour. I'll attempt another scarf for myself out of that, something at least a little fancier than the infinity scarf I just finished. Speaking of, this is the final result. I think I overcompensated when I decided to make it a little longer after I frogged the first attempt; a couple inches shorter than this might have been better:

Though I'll admit I was pleasantly surprised by just how wide the final scarf is; it's wider than I can span with one hand, around 10" (27cm) from side to side. I didn't think the yarn would work up to that much; it was a large ball skein, yes, but very loosely wound. Which proved a problem as hunks of it kept separating from the main ball and then trying to tangle, and eventually it pretty much completely fell apart into several clumps of yarn (another reason to get a yarn winder; so I can preemptively wind any similarly loose balls or skeins I ever buy).

I also think the scarf would have looked better if the yarn had been a single gradient rather than a repeating one (yes I am now eyeing up gradient acrylics for a possible future attempt at one I can actually wear without my allergies objecting).

(Edited to fix my wrong wound wool shapes terminaology - I have now learned better.)