Noro rush

It may not have passed unnoticed by regular readers of this blog that I am more than a trifle partial to the loveliness that is Noro yarn. Recently I have waxed lyrical about the wonders and softness of Silk Garden, and the deep deep blue of Cash Iroha as they twisted and turned themselves into Christmas presents for friends and family.

However, it was a little over a year ago that I got my first baptism by Noro when a group of us made Lizard Ridge squares for a friend's baby, and it is 11 months since that double whammy of yarn and pattern led me to cast on for a Lizard Ridge of my very own.

I started off at a great pace but when I picked up the Noro needles again in December it'd been a while since any wannabe egg cartons had emerged from my needles. Definitely time to remedy the situation, and I had an incentive.

New yarn. New American Noro to be precise. Actually, if we're going to be exact about this, Noro in colours that I have not seen in the UK (hee hee!).

So far I have knitted 22 Lizard Ridge squares (if you include the one I just finished this evening). H and I are both tall, and there's nothing worse than a blanket that you can't wrap your toes in and still tuck under your chin so I think we're going the whole hog and adding an extra 'repeat' - a 7 x 5 blanket, rather than 6 x 4. It's a combination of eeek and yippee, more yarn!

The latest squares are some of my favourites:

An English 164 (I think - I lost the label). This is another artistic interpretation of the sea meets the land - a turquoise sea meets sandy beaches, gorse bushes and the cliff




The first of my American Noro squares - this is 175 and it says hot slightly scorched English roses on a totally still August afternoon; that moment when the blooms just start to droop their heads.



Another English square - 173 - it's a swimmer in a bright red cossie cleaving through a pool with that funny wiggle tile on the bottom



A mongrel square - pieced together with leftovers and looking oddly more united than some of the main squares - this is sunrise over the vale of Evesham on the road to Tewskbury the first Christmas that I drove home from Warwickshire really early in the morning, I woke up early and left early because I was nervous about the long drive and it wasn't until I got to Evesham that the sun appeared through the valley, rising above a sparkling silver mist.



According to my Ravelry notes I started this blanket on 6 March 2008 and it would be nice to think that I could finish it by 6 March 2009. I'm not putting any kind of deadline down because as we know that dooms me either to failure or to multiple late nights to get it finished, neither of which is something that I'm prepared to contemplate right now. Instead, lets just say that it would be nice to finish it in time to untuck myself from it to greet the spring - whenever that may be.