The need for diversion

There's nothing like starting the front of a single sweater four times to make you a little sick of it. And between that and probably needing to reknit much of the Plaid Texture pullover and not making much progress on the Slip-Into-Color pullover either, I was feeling a mite frustrated toward all things sweater-y. So I knitted a smoke ring.

It's not so much that I had a burning desire to knit a smoke ring, but I finally had a pattern that would let me play with Mini Mochi. I've admired the yarn for a while, but it seemed intended as sock yarn. Not only do I not knit a lot of socks, but I didn't think this would be a great yarn for socks. I mean, yeah, it's 20% nylon, and I understand nylon is supposed to add strength. But that other 80% is merino wool in singles form, all soft and plush (inasmuch as a fingering weight yarn can be plush) and looking as if it would pill and shred the first time you wore the socks. So I restrained myself to just petting it when I visited it at the yarn shop. And then a friend showed off her smoke ring and said that it had taken only one ball of Mini Mochi. I hadn't been thinking to start the project right away, but then I needed something portable, I was sick of the sweaters, and one thing led to another.



It's wonderfully soft, and warmer than it looks. I think I'll try another one, in a different colorway, and try another pattern stitch, just for some variety. The pattern said to work until it was 12" long. That seemed awfully skimpy, though. Unlike my friend, I'd needed to use a second ball anyway (and by the way, keeping Mini Mochi in a color sequence is a bit of a pain), so I just kept knitting until the colors were at a better stopping point, which made the finished smoke ring closer to 15" long.

Thoroughly distracted

Today was the first day after Daylight Savings Time ended for the year, and having the sun set an hour earlier cut into my beading time just as I suspected it would. I figured I'd better press ahead with another beading kit while there was still some light to work by. This time around, I chose to work on the Palisades Necklace. It looks fairly simple, but it ended up taking longer than I expected to complete.



The construction of the necklace is fairly straightforward: thread an eyepin through each bead and cut and bend it to form a second loop. Then use bits of chain to link the beads together. However, it takes time to bend nineteen eyepins. And those links of chain came as a single strand that had to be cut apart oh so carefully, lest you clip the wrong link and ruin a section. I dropped one section and nearly didn't find it again—eek! This project did end up using all the beading tools I'd bought, so now I feel justified in having bought them! The one drawback to the project was that before I knew it, most of the (now shorter) afternoon had passed. So much for getting anything else done today. 

I believe the beads are fluorite, although again, there's nothing in the kit to identify them. It's going to be a bit of a challenge to find a sweater that can set off all those shades, from almost white to deepest purple.