Candy Colors

Russell Stover's makes an "Assorted Creams" box, with a teal colored printed ribbon, that has my favorite of their chocolates: the fruit creams. For reasons unbeknownst to me, it has either 4 or 6 chocolates whose title also includes Maple and only one that has Orange, Apricot, and Lemon, but I suffer through.

This project is actually one reborn. About 3.5 years ago, I had fallen down the path of the Yarn Harlot's suggestion (me and everyone else...) and purchased some Wolle's Yarn Creation in the Strawberry to Hershey Colorway. I'd even started it, as evidenced in this old blog post.

While the yarn continues to be pretty



I found I didn't like the pattern I was using--a garter stitch triangular scarf. It just didn't work with gradient and I couldn't get enthused about it.

So I ripped out what had been knit up, decided I wanted something rectangular, and traipsed over to Ravelry for a click around. The pattern I settled on is called Upstairs and it's by WollSchnegge.  Several other people have used the yarn for this pattern and it seemed like a good choice. Here's the pattern page, if you'd like to follow along there.  I'm calling this pattern Upstairs in the Candy Shop.

I knew I wanted a scarf rather than stole and so, poking around other people's notes, decided that 5 repeats looked like a plan.  About 12 rows in, I could tell that this was far too wide and ripped out again. The yarn still looks pretty good for having been ripped twice and reknit.

Now I've just finished the fully pink section.



As you can see, there's that single strand of color change, starting the red section, which will eventually take over the full four plies and then progress through to chocolate brown.



The pattern is easily memorized, though I have tossed the repeats into Evernote so I can pull it up quickly on my phone as I'm taking this about with me. Or at least when I've moved from couch to chair.

A complaint I've heard about this yarn specifically and which I will acknowledge is that because the plies aren't twisted, it's so easy to miss one. This isn't a project that I can knit while doing anything particularly visual, so that puts it right out for meetings and most television watching. I'm hoping that this time around I can complete it in less than three years, though.

Mindless home knitting has become a cone of bulky weight cotton, in a pale baby yellow, on size 9 needles. I'm making washcloths. Moss stitch, small log cabin squares, whatever comes off the needles next. It's been a few years since my last major bout of washcloth making (that was 2007) and I have no doubt that several/many of those washcloths have been used up.  And as there are still a large number of skeins of bulky weight cotton weighing down the stash...