More sweetness!

More news on the Sweet CAL front. Dug out my beading stash and made myself some smart new stitch markers to replace the paperclips I've been using for way too long. Sterling wire with freshwater pearls. Ain't they cute? Slid on and off nicely too.

I want to say a few words about my yarn as the babe cut my last post short of the details. It's Araucania Yarns' Pehuen in "color 4". Great blues and browns. Hand dyed 100% cotton, nicely nubby but still s.o.f.t. Absolutely love how it's working up. It was clear as soon as I started swatching that there would be no trouble with color pooling, it's all very random and color repeats are very short. Played around with a few stitches, but since it's a textured yarn, it doesn't make sense to use anything fancy, so struck upon the extended sc as the winner and it's making a nicely uniform fabric that's not overly bulky. Almost did hdc before i realized the subtle banding goes in directions this bod definitely does NOT need more attention drawn to.

This was my first attempt, following the original template:

Wanted the neckline more open so frogged it and have redone it using Skamama's deeper neck and BINGO, lovin' it. Thank you Julie. Hasn't had a chance for it's photo-op though, so will hopefully be a bit further along by the time you see it. My neck's looking a bit more square-ish than the others though. Am hoping there's not more frogging in my future.

I didn't know how I was going to do with a sort of detailed project with all that's going on right now, but it's actually nice to have something engrossing to take me away. There's a tag for you, "Crochet, take me away."