I love soy silk!

After all my conflicted feelings about the softness of the yarn and the drape vs. firmness of the scarf, I'm really loving the soy silk. It's soft with some nice, but not overpowering, warmth. I really hope that my dad likes it, especially since I've been reading a lot about knitting and boyfriends and what to knit and not knit. It's silly, to use knitting as a lithmus test for a relationship, though I don't think I'd knit something more than a scarf or a shawl or a tie for anyone other than myself, anyway. This is mostly because I am still uncomfortable with (or perhaps a better way of saying it would be mostly ignoring) THE GAUGE.

I was looking through the Stitch N Bitch, and I am always amazed by how things make more sense after I've had some more time to knit. Like when I first opened the book, it barely made any sense to me. And now, 3 months later, I get most of what is going on in it, though I'm not able to do all the techniques, yet. For some reason the key-hole scarf, one of the easier projects, eluded me, for the simple reason that starting a new ball and using two colors scared me at first, though now this seems like a really simple pattern that I would love to try. It occurred to me that this might make a good gift scarf, perhaps with 2 of the colors of Manos del Uruguay Stria that I have in my boxes? Though, this is the kind of scarf I'd like to have for myself, too...

I realized as I looked back on the last paragraph that I was hesitant to use the word "stash" (I used boxes). Why? Maybe it feels like I'm not really a part of the knitting community that uses words like "stash" or "LYS," yet. I know that sounds ridiculous. I've heard of the concept of "stash busting," and I think this is actually what I have been doing for the past few projects (knitpicks shine and shine twist for the tank top, soy silk oasis for my dad's scarf, manos stria for the possible gift scarf), but all of the yarn I have is 3 months old or less, so can that really be called a stash? I do like the feeling of going through the boxes and making the yarn into something. I don't want to be someone who just accumulates yarn, and I could see that happening if I didn't pay attention.



I should mention that as soon as I said in my last post (click here until I transfer the posts over) that I hadn't made a mistake on the scarf, I did! It's not a big, noticeable one, though. One of the ridged sections is slightly longer than the others, and the side ridges are closer together. It's the kind of pattern where that kind of thing doesn't really matter, which is nice. But it was funny to do it right then, because I did jinx myself. Superstition is not made up, really.