Laure

I recently (and by recently, I mean a few months ago), I cam across a beautiful Nora Gaughn pattern from Berroco's website called "Laure." Now this was a beautiful pattern with curves and angles, so I decided I needed to make it. I had 4 skeins of an Alpaca I bought on the internet in college that are about the same weight as Ultra Alpaca, so I went for it.

This thing was a pain. You make all the little hexagons seperately (okay, I'll give you that), and then you go and pick up stitches all along the edges of the hexagons (and here: when they say the k1 edge, they mean the selvedge edge rather than the outside of the hexagons. That was my first sign that all was not well. And, up to this point, I had been trusting that the pattern knew what it was doing. Because, honestly, I had a pile of blobs that were supposed to morph into my new scarf (I was skeptical).

Once I had that edging done (and this is the point that all the hexagons were connected) I still had to pick up and knit a ruffle edging around each and every single *@%#in one of them! And to make matters worse, I ran out of yarn close to the very end. Thankfully I was able to find a yarn with a close color match (Ultra Alpaca) and finish it.

And it still looked like nothing I would wish to inflict upon even my worst enemy. It looked like a mass from outer space that had latched itself to my neck and was searching to leach every last bit of life from me.

But then I blocked it. And it magically turned into something I would wear. Often even. My friend K graciously agreed to a photo shoot. I managed to get photos of several things that I have made recently but have no photos of (isn't it hard to get photos of yourself in a hat?)...no decent photos I should say. The photo above being the perfect example. So again, thank you Kelly!

Pattern Laure (Ravelry Link)

Yarn: Filatura Lanaroto Puno and Ultra Alpaca

In other news, I have been making a rainbow of sheep. They are all felted, and I feel a photo shoot coming on. Rainbow sheep and....skittles!