If you’re going to order yarn from Knit Picks, I highly recommend ordering some color cards while you’re at it. Face it: there’s just no way to mentally mix and match colors off a website, the colors are never going to be what you expect when you’re looking at digital pictures being displayed on a computer monitor.

These are probably one of the best purchases I’ve ever made. They’re less than $2 each, and it also lets you feel the yarn. Pictured open is the color card for Merino Style.

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Looks a bit like berber carpet, doesn’t it? Feels like it, too, until you put it through the blocking process. This is color #10 (I guess they don’t really have names).

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I worked with a few skeins of Noro Blossom last night (I’ll post pics of the final result after the recipient has received it). Man, it felt like that stuff was fighting me every step of the way.

It defeated any attempts to check gauge, and I ended up having to work by just measuring it and increasing or decreasing as necessary. The entire time I was knitting, I was getting 4 stitches to the inch. But the end result is 21 inches long, at 64 stitches. Try doing the math on that one, I dare you.

Any textured yarn is tricky to work with, but the lumps in Blossom seemed particularly obstinate. I think the lumps are to blame for the freakish non-gauge. It didn’t even feel very nice as I was working with it - not nearly as nice as I would have expected from a mohair/silk blend.

That is, not until I blocked it. I’m not sure what strange alchemy happens when you give it a bit of a soak and lay it out to dry, but it changed into a completely different creature. When I peeked into the laundry closet this morning to see the final results, I found that the sullen, uncooperative thing I had knit was gone. As it dried in the night, it was replaced by a soft, drape-y marvel in Noro’s fantabulous colors.

At any rate: Noro Blossom. Hated working with it, love it after it’s blocked.

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