Yummy Noro Yarn

Ok, I love Noro Silk Garden Lite! Oh the joy of a striping yarn in such a fantastic fiber with such long long stretches of color. Each color appears only once in the whole skein, so I was able to make a large project and still have it stripe nicely. And it is very soft and nice to knit with, although there were sometimes little twigs and such in the yarn. They are easy to pick out though. I chose color 2011, which was greys blacks browns olives lime green orange and red. Very interesting to knit with! The project I chose was the Lady of the Forest shawl designed by Ilga Leja. This pattern was such a pleasure to work with as it was very precise and absolutely flawless. I get so fed up with patterns that are riddled with mistakes or excluded instructions. This one was very clearly written and easy to follow. The challenge was joining yarn as I always tried to join the colors exactly so the joins would not show. This meant I used parts of 12 skeins but I think if I had not been so careful about it I would have probably been able to knit this with 10. What was nice was that the package of yarn I bought was all from the same dye lot (never again will I talk myself into that mistake) and appeared to be broken off one from the other, so it was mostly a matter of finding the next ball that naturally followed. The result is that the two sides match and it all is seamless. It was fun to knit and I want to knit something else large with Noro! I decided to make a frog closure for it using Nicky Epstein's Knitting Beyond the Edge book which Kevin gave me for Christmas. Nice to use a knitting book that has been sitting on the shelf! haven't attached the frog yet, so here's a picture of its parts while I blocked them. The straight one I'll coil to make a loop for the one with the "button."

The only change I made to the pattern was to knit it in Stockinette stitch instead of Garter as I thought it would show off the color changes in the yarn better, which it does, but it also made the front quite long. I like it that way though. You can see that two of the orange stripes on the back appear to be close together. That is because the first skein I use had been wound backwards (as far as color order) by Noro! Was strange. But I like the way it came out.