Pinky on the Brain

It's a gray Tuesday roundabout Exit 151. I used to think days like this were just overcast – thanks to Haze Cam Newark, I now know that much of the grayness actually is from elevated levels of air pollution (!). At least I have an FO to brighten the day, a short scarf (with marshmallow bunnies).



While looking for something else at Needlecraftique (Exit 151), I [cough] just happened to notice the basket of Noro Taiyo, looking fresh as spring. New Noro! No surprise, I danced the happy dance went home with a skein, colorway 4.



Because I know Noro, I rewound the 100-gram, 200-meter center-pull skein and found – yup – a knot that disrupted the color sequence. Were it not for the knot, it looks like there would be 1½ color repeats. As it is, I have three repeats of the girliest colors in the colorway, which isn't so bad.



During the Oscars show, the larger portion turned into the scarf – moss stitch with slip stitch borders, no fringe. Nice production knitting, something simple to showcase the brilliant colors and wabi-sabi-ness of the yarn. The scarf is 5 inches wide by 48 inches long (12 x 122 cm), just long enough to knot and tuck. (There's enough yarn left to make it a foot (30 cm) longer, if desired.) Here it is in futomaki view.



And here's some futomaki, for gentle readers who don't know sushi.



Taiyo is fabulous – 40% cotton, 30% silk, 15% wool, 15% nylon – very like a cotton-silk version of Kureyon, except perhaps a bit more smoothly spun. Noro fans will love its mix of brilliant colors, rustic texture, luster, and strength. In the course of working out the dimensions of the scarf, I knit and frogged several times with no noticeable frizzing. As is to be expected, the yarn has considerable grab; I used aluminum needles. The wool and nylon content keep the yarn light and hopefully will reduce the tendency of cotton and silk to sag and bag.



I love my new scarf and am very happy with the new yarn. It remains to be seen how it wears, but at the moment I could see it easily substituting for Kureyon or Silk Garden in projects such as the Brooklyn Tweed Noro Striped Scarf, Argosy, Klaralund, or Poppy, to name just a few.