There’s a new project on the needles Chez Blue Garter. When Joy offered to bring back orders from Art Fibers during her San Francisco trip, I knew I had to get my hands on some Chai silk. The store didn’t have the exact colorway I’d selected from the website, but #33 was close: a gentle variegation ranging from magenta to warm bronze. I’m calling it “Bourbon rose”. The pattern I selected for it is the Lace Trim Bolero from Vogue Knitting Summer 2005. This is as close to the shrug as I go, folks. An upper-body garment, unless is it a shawl or wrap, must have a Front for me to wish to make its acquaintance. None of your sleeves connected across the back, thank you very much.

Anyway, here’s my progress:

That’s the completed back piece, and I’ve made a start on the left front. I’m hoping to finish in time for the wedding we have to attend in Chicago in mid-September. Impressions? The Chai is a thick-and-thin yarn, which doesn’t show off the decorative eyelets to their best advantage, but I’m quite happy with the way this project is coming out. Blocking, or even–gasp–ironing as Art Fibers recommends, should improve the look of the eyelets. The silk is luscious (although it’s tricky not to stab into some of the thicker sections) and behaves beautifully on my green aluminum #5’s from the flea market. And I love the colors. I’m pretty wary of variegated yarns (except for socks), but this kind of gentle color shifting I can appreciate.

Speaking of socks and variegated yarn, starting my second Feather-and-Fan sock has proven excruciating. Observe this:

See how the colors are bodging together on the new sock instead of striping? I determined to knit the leg of Sock #2 on larger needles (#1’s) because the first sock is so difficult to pull over my heel. The slightly larger gauge may be part of my problem, but I also believe that dumb luck led me to cast on the first sock at a very advantageous point in the color range. I ripped out my new beginnings three times last night. The dye lot is the same between skeins, but even when I looked carefully at Sock #1 and tried to cast on in the same place (so the join falls where the blue is just shifting to grey), I got the Dreaded Pooling. Finally I realized I was pulling from the center of the new ball, where as I’d drawn from the outside when I began the first sock. In case this was somehow making a difference, I stuffed my frogged squiggles back into the center and drew from the outside. What do you know?

Much better.