Just Say NO-ro

After Christmas I took a bit of a break and knit a nice, post-holiday trifle, the classic Jared Flood Noro striped scarf. It's a great pattern and the results are really nice, which you can't really see here, since I took these photos after the sun went down.

People have done their edgings various ways. My choice was on every row, before the last stitch, to bring the yarn forward and slip the last stitch purl-wise. Having a nice edge is one of the basic yet important things that really makes this scarf.

The other thing that makes this scarf is how you cast on and off. I decided to use a tubular version of each, which I had never done before. Using a needle about 3 sizes smaller than the body of the scarf, I cast on 25 stitches using the long tail cast-on but alternating the stitches. That is, casting on a knit stitch (the typical way) and then reversing the motion (i.e., hooking the back loop first and then coming forward) to get a purl stitch. Then c.o. a knit, then a purl, etc. It takes a while to wrap your brain around it, but once you do, it's a revelation. On the next row, I knit every knit stitch, then brought the yarn forward, slipped the purl stitch, moved the yarn to the back and knit the next knit stitch, etc. On the next row, you do the same thing -- the stitches you had slipped you now knit, etc. Do two more rows like so, then move to the bigger needles and begin the basic k1, p1, ribbing. Casting off is pretty much the same, going down many needle sizes and reversing the four rows. Then, you take two needles and move the k stitches to the front needle, the purl stitches to the back, and voila, you have two sets of stitches over two needles to Kitchener together. Techknitter describes it here. It's utterly ingenious. Going down a few needle sizes firms up the edge but also leaves it sproingy and flexible.

The finished scarf is below, and looks pretty nice, if I do say so myself. David loves it and he's the one who's going to wear it. But -- and here's where the rant starts -- I'm beginning to tire of Noro and it's "foibles" (aka, it's undeniable crappiness). Sure, we love the color shifts, the interesting wool blends, and the fact that making projects with it gives us instant gratification. BUT, Kureyon is now something like 9 bucks a skein retail, which is pretty steep. I met with many, many knots in each skein and had to do quite a bit of splicing. Furthermore [stepping onto soapbox now], the colors were weirdly distributed and I had to do some serious editing. A cherry red-to-navy blue transition occurred in one skein but not the other two, and there were some pretty terrible areas of orange-gray that truly looked pukey.

I didn't take a photo of the yarn I have left, but there's a big wad of it I couldn't or didn't want to use.

So, Noro's nice and all, but I think I'm saying NO-ro for a while.