Love/hate relationship

So the frilly scarf pattern with that mesh yarn I posted about last time is an incredible pain in the, er, neck. The knitting happens only in the mesh holes at one side of the yarn. Right off the bat, that means that I can't knit continentally, or in fact use any yarn-holding method which wends its way through or around your fingers, which slows things right down. Then you also need to be very precise about getting the right hole over the needle to pull through to make the next stitch, which slows things down even more. For someone like me, who takes less than a second to work a stitch, this snail-like slowness (three to five seconds per stitch) is very frustrating. True, each row is only six to ten stitches wide (depending on the size of scarf you want to make), so the scarf still gets done in fairly decent time, but the doing remains frustrating.

But I pushed through.

Yeah, it looks kind of ridiculous lying there like that - like a Shai-Hulud all dressed up for a snazzy night of disco.

But when you actually wear it?

ZOMG, it is faaaaabulous!!!

So much so that my husband has had to speak sternly to me about my habit of prancing around the house wearing it when it is destined to be someone else's present. Thus, when I finally made it back out to my LYS on Saturday, I fell down hard and bought three more balls.

For DD1:

For DD2:

For (probably) me:

(I actually wanted the same gorgeous red/purple colourway that DD2 said was her favourite, but there was only one ball of it left.)

I also fell down some more and got yarn to make (at her request) Pemberley Slippers for DD1: (pattern from Jane Austen Knits 2011)

And enough yarn to make DD3 a Parfait cardigan: (my own pattern; see left sidebar)

(You can't tell, but it's cream and peachy-pink and pale lavender.)

Already I have started DD2's scarf:

And DD1's slippers:

And DD1's morning teacher's gift:

It's going to be a felted mini-bag. I'm using some leftover New Zealand wool that I picked up years ago off of eBay and which I used to make an Elizabethan Jacket for my MIL; and some leftover Briggs & Little Regal that I used three years ago to make an anniversary scarf for my dad. The two colours are very similar but different enough that you can tell they're different. I think they look very handsome put together. I'd prefer to have them striping all the way down the bag, but I'm concerned that the two yarns might felt at different rates and create a weird-looking effect. Whereas if the two yarns are one on top of each other, it won't be so horrible and I can always do some spot-felting afterwards to even things up.