Casting off

 I finished a thing! In fact I cast off two things in one day, but only one is blocked. The fingerless mitts above (Dalkey mitts, pattern by Carol Feller, from her book Contemporary Irish Knits, wool is the Yarn Yard Clan) were my Project Rainbow item for September/October. They were quite fiddly for me - cables and lace and thumbs, oh my! But I learned a lot from them. Still can't do thumbs without getting a nasty gap at the base though (the knitted thumb, not my own - my own thumbs survived the process intact).

The same day I finally cast off my Spoots scarf - a long, long, long razor-shell lace scarf using Shilasdair Luxury 4-ply. I still need to block it though - not sure if I have enough pins...

And this bundle of sunshine is what you get when I'm thinking about what to do for Nov/Dec in Project Rainbow:

 The colour this time is orange - the buttercup yellow Clan and the naturally-dyed pale yellow (horsetail I think) are there just so as to convince myself that the oranges are actually orange. Generally speaking I do not like orange At All. But I'd forgotten I had that ball of the Yarn Yard Bonny (possibly? lost the label of course) in a sort of glorious saffrony colour. It hasn't photographed very well but it's beeeeeautiful. And then there's the two skeins of Bonny (Brushstrokes, the October Surprise)  which arrived on Saturday. Lots of orange but I like it!


 Better picture of the Brushstrokes here:

 Isn't that gorgeous? All autumnal!

 So I've gone from thinking 'oh no, orange, I'll have to take the Get out of Jail Free Card and do a neutral this time' to having a choice of two. I could even use both! But I've still to decide what to knit - and Orange starts tomorrow.  I was thinking of trying toe-up socks but after reading a few patterns I've got the feeling that the gains to be had from working toe-up are outweighed by the nightmare prospect of complicated toe-up cast-ons. In addition all the patterns I've seen call for using circs, which I hate with a passion - they have their place, brilliant for enormous shawls for example, but the idea of using them for small projects just leaves me cold. Give me dpns any day. It's not necessarily a big deal but using a pattern written for circs would involve me scribbling all over the pattern to keep track of where I am.

If you're not a knitter you're probably convinced I'm speaking in tongues by now.  Trust me, it all makes sense.

Right I'm off to make up bags of sweeties for tonight's guisers. Hope the weather is better by then!