Finished and started!

[crafty_packrat]

At the Wednesday night knitting group, I finally finished the Mallorean Trees socks (actually, the Lothlorien pattern by Janel Laidman from The Enchanted Sole, but in a brownish colorway), which required binding off with a sewing needle to get a nice K1P1 ribbing edge.








I also started the Jasmine Lace Scarf to go with my Jasmine Lace mitts.



Sadly, the ball on Mini Mochi I had had 2 knots in it, which means for my purchase of 2 balls of Mini Mochi, I have 3 knots. That is not a good ratio, and I'm going to have to think pretty hard before I buy another skein of Mini Mochi, even though it has some fabulous colorways and some wonderful patterns written just for it, like the Rainbow Striped Socks or the Rodekool Scarf.

Comments

[pinesandmaples]

I love the sewn bind-off! It's my favorite socks and lace b-o. (Twisted German is my favorite cast-on.)

[crafty_packrat]

I have to have my book in front of me to do any of the sewn bind-offs correctly, so it's not as easy as a knitted bind-off.

This is probably why I don't knit many toe-up socks -- that, the fact that I find getting the foot length right really tricky, and the heels don't usually fit well either makes toe-ups a much less enjoyable method for socks that cuff-down.

[pinesandmaples]

I think it's a lot easier, but it takes practice to learn. Just like grafting a toe or doing a three-needle bind-off. I don't have either of those skills memorized because they don't come up often enough. It's all in what we use.

[fyrdrakken]

That's a glorious colorway -- I'd been having some thoughts about making myself a third Irtfa'a at some point and doing it in purple/cherry/flame/orange for a sort of "phoenix wings" effect, though I shelved the idea when I was having a hard time finding the right shades all in the same base yarn. Switching to a single long-repeat colorway would solve that problem (though what I really wanted was a shawl that ran through the given colors only once from shoulders to border, rather than striping).

And I checked my Ravelry projects to refresh my memory -- I made a couple of pairs of mitts, but they were using Mochi Plus. (I don't recall any knots, though -- just my usual frustration at varying thicknesses and wonky twisting when working with single-ply.) I've got some Mini Mochi in my stash, but I haven't done anything with it yet. I also have a ball of KnitPicks' Chroma Fingering, but since I haven't worked with it, either, I can't speak to how well it serves as a substitute.

[crafty_packrat]

You might want to look at the Evolutions from Twisted Fiber Art -- they're dyed to order versions of their current colorways available in several different weights and fiber combos. You might like the Juicy colorway or the Sweet Tooth colorway in fine yarn

Personally, I want to do the Eyjafjallajökull Shawl in the Ember colorway, but it's going to be a while before I have the money to splurge on something like that...

The single-ply nature of Mini Mochi means I have to extra careful about avoiding splitting stitches. The scarf is going to be pretty, but rather fuzzy at the moment.

I've never tried KP's Chroma. Is that the one with the colorway called 'Time Traveler'?

[fyrdrakken]

Ooh! Why didn't it occur to me to look into Evolutions? (Probably because I'm used to working with Twisted Fiber Art's sockyarn -- I'm sitting here right now wearing a pair of kneesocks made from Arial in the "Giles" colorway -- but haven't tried Evolutions yet.) You're right about "Juicy" and "Sweet Tooth" both being fairly close to what I'm looking for -- though on looking at the Evolutions projects page I see that "Blaze" is just about perfect. Since I wasn't anticipating doing this project anytime in the next half-year or so, might as well just keep an eye on their stock and wait for them to start dyeing "Blaze" again. Meanwhile, I might just get a quantity of "Ravelry" in Evolutions instead of in the plain striping Arial I'd been thinking of -- maybe do another Aeolian Shawl larger than the little shoulderette version I made last year. (Or try out Laminaria instead, maybe.)

My birthday is later this month, and I generally get enough money gifted to look forward to a bit of splurging. I'd been thinking most of this year's money would go towards the fangirl get-together I'm going to in November and maybe I'd throw in the yarn for a single self-indulgent project. I'd been leaning towards buying some pricey angora-blend yarn for a Guernsey Wrap -- but I've about half talked myself into just using KnitPicks' Wool of the Andes in "Lake Ice Heather" for that wrap and spending fancy money on other yarn that I've bookmarked and been staring at wistfully -- Royal Wedding laceweight, or enough Madelinetosh sockyarn in "Glazed Pecan" for a pair of kneesocks, or possibly even a few skeins from Twisted Fiber Arts. (The above-mentioned "Ravelry" and a skein of "Warlock" in self-striping Arial.)

Edited to answer your final question: Chroma is the slow-color-change, Felici is the self-striping sockyarn that just recently brought "Time Traveler" back as a colorway. And yes, they got it fairly close to the colors in a Four scarf.