Knitting on a Sunday Morning

The other day I talked about how I'm not really interested in anything much at the moment, that I'm just kind of apathetic and miserable.  Well, I decided yesterday I'd try to get out of the house and find some activity to capture my interest, at least a little bit.

Rozetti Tundra Self-Ruffling Yarn

I decided to go look for this funky, self-ruffling yarn I keep seeing online.  It was all the rage around Christmas time, presumably so you could buy it and make a scarf for a gift.  Well, as usual, I'm late to the party, so I'm past gift time but I thought I'd still try to make a scarf with it.  I went to a little local yarn store not too far away (it's called Fiberworks -- sadly, locally owned yarn shops are getting harder and harder to find these days), and they had one hank left -- enough to make a scarf.  So I snapped it up.

Skip stitch scarf pattern with Tundra yarn

I started the scarf when I got home, and man, it's a pain in the rear.  It knits up reeeeeaaaaally slowly, and to make the ruffle happen, you're pretty much knitting into one edge of the yarn that is nothing but thread.  On the up side, the finished portion is pretty.  This is one pattern for a scarf using the yarn; I sort of made up my own that isn't a skip stitch pattern.  I don't know if that's making it slower to knit up or not. 

On another note, though, I'm really excited about this book I got at the store.  I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but I'm a knitting (actually, arts/crafts in general) book junkie, and I'm especially a sucker for knitting books with really beautiful, artsy photos.  For example, Teva Durham's books are beautiful -- she was an editor at Vogue Knitting and has really cool designs (check out Loop-d-Loop:  More than 40 Novel Designs for Knitters), and I also love Knitting Over the Edge and all the related books in that series.  I don't know that I've ever actually completed any projects in either of those books, but I just like looking through them.

Anyway, I found a book at the store called Knit Noro Accessories:  30 Colorful Little Knits.  All the designs use some incarnation of Noro yarn, which pretty much means they're going to be beautiful no matter what -- I think Noro has such pretty, tactile-ly pleasing yarn.  But there are some seriously cool scarves and other random patterns in there (a tea cozy! -  but it sure ain't like your grandma's tea cozy) and I want to dig right in.  I even thought about trying to do a "Julie and Julia" thing and do each one of the patterns in order, but I don't think my bank account would hold out -- one little catch about Noro yarn, is that it can be pricey (especially if you're practically buying it in bulk, which I would have to do to make every pattern in the book).  So I thought I'd just start with one and go from there. 

Long story short, my quest to find something to interest me has paid off, at least for the time being.  I'm kind of in a place where I feel like everything I touch turns to crap, so it may be a little bit dangerous starting some sort of new project, but I gotta try something.  I'll keep you posted.

Oh, and I FINALLY finished that book I'd been reading for like, three weeks.  It was good.  I'd recommend it -- The Leftovers, by Tom Perrotta.