Tomorrow the Green Grass

I've been thinking all week about starting something new. A knitting project that is so compelling and exciting that I will start and finish it immediately, using the world's best yarn and the tiniest, pointiest needles. Then I snap back to reality, and decide just to keep working on the three projects that are currently in heavy rotation: Summer Sky socks (almost ready for heels), Wino Juno (Five inches knit since the rip-out), and a project that I've been working on pretty regularly at home but not talking about much--the green Autumn Lace scarf. I've camouflaged it pretty well, but if you look closely, you can pick it out in this photo:

Ignore the super professional look of the ends hanging down. The scarf is just about halfway done now, and it's growing on me daily. The yarn (Alpaca with a Twist Fino) has a nice fuzziness to it that I will blame for the photo being slightly out of focus. It is "Fino" for sure--it's easily the thinnest yarn that I've knit with, but the silk content means that it's super strong. Also, the green is really rich, and looked lovely in the dusky sunlight this evening. The pattern is pretty straightforward (though I'm glued to a chart), with enough variation that I'd never knit 15 inches before noticing a serious error. That's not to say that I haven't made any errors, but I've either caught them early enough to avoid ripping this out, or they haven't thrown off the stitch count and I'll find them when it's blocking (ugh). I like that the large leaves make a solid area that shows off the yarn (rather than just the yarn-overs), and I like the strong diagonals. I'm still using the Pattern Tamer with the chart that I talked about in the last post about this scarf, and I'm still really, really happy with it--it does not budge at all when tossed about in the knitting bag.

Here's a closer shot of the pattern, stretched out a little but not severely:

So I started this November, and it's half done in July, so I'm on pace to finish it completely by May of 2009. Or earlier, if I can avoid putting it on ice for six months again. I'm not going to promise that I won't start the world's most perfect knitting project in the meantime (but I do like this one pretty well for now).