Mittens and Scarves

I made these mittens earlier in the year and recently hauled them out for gift-giving. Although given the warm weather we've been having in southeast Michigan...I think it's almost 50 degrees today...I'm not sure when we will be needing these. Nevertheless, I embellished them and will soon wrap them up and give them away. I love these felted mittens which are great to wear when you're outside walking the dog or strolling the neighborhood.

I'm still having fun experimenting with Photobucket. My poor Facebook friends are getting an overdose of my doctored photos but I'm sure I will soon get tired of it. I still haven't utilized all the special features though but I'm working on it!

I've been addicted to crocheting these flower motif scarves. I dug into my stash of Noro yarns..the beautiful self-striping yarns from Japan. I literally have a whole Rubbermaid bin of different Noro yarns but I'm making a dent with these scarves, which take about 500 yards to complete.

This is the first scarf I made. I'm embarrassed to admit my first attempt was a disaster. I sat down one night and worked up a 10 petal motif. I ended up making 2 rows of these motifs, attaching them as I went along. But when I went to attach the third row, I couldn't make it work. And worse, it took me forever to actually realize why! Being geometrically-challenged, I failed to understand that I needed a 12-petal motif to make it work. I ripped out all the motifs and literally spent hours using the Russian joining method to get usable size balls of yarn. I recently learned that technique...there are youtube tutorials to show you how to attach yarn without tying knots. Noro is perfect yarn for this technique so instead of ending up with dozens of golf-ball size yarn balls, I got 3 good size hanks.

 

Here's a photo of my scarf in progress with a different flower motif than the previous two. It's a six petal flower. Although it drives me crazy, I don't weave in the yarn ends as I go along. I'm finding as I go to attach additional rows, that I occasionally have made a mistake with either attaching the motif or with the actual flower. I'm easily able to rip out just the one motif, correct it and move on.

 

This one is my favorite: