noro, what’s up?

the blog title has a purpose. i’ll get to that but let’s explain how i came to ask that. the lace ribbon scarf caught my eye awhile ago when sherry & marissa were knitting it up. i was more in a shawl/sweater mode i think when the spring 2008 issue of knitty went up so i didn’t jump on it right away. then, i just needed something simple and was surprised at just how repetitive and memorizable the pattern is. i cast on for it in soysilk, two strands held together. one color was variegated and the other was the magenta color you see the most of. it looked so splotchy so i gave up on it. i tried some skeins of schaefer anne, but the variegation is so crazy with some of my favorite skeins (i.e. big bird vomit) that i left those aside as well.

then along came the noro silk garden sock yarn! we’d just gotten it in at the store and the natural color had been in my mind as the perfect yarn for the pattern. it’s light enough where you see the lace repeats but it also shows the color changes in the yarn.

this brings me to my question…noro, what’s up? you say this and the kureyon sock yarn is for SOCKS. however, i have not been able to make a pair. before i finished the ribbing the kureyon sock yarn broke in 3 or 4 separate parts. i look at the tons of socks done on ravelry in these yarns and see that it can be done, but how? i’m not as tight of a knitter as i was when i started. i’m not named she-hulk or anything that might make you think i’m a gladiator. can we get a sock yarn that still has the qualities of noro without being so fragile? i understand the singles ply business. the lesser the ply (or lack thereof) the more susceptible it is to breaking. this does not remove the sadness at my inability to make socks out of the yarn.

oh well. i’ve resolved to see these two as scarf/small shawl yarns. maybe a little faux fair isle action, also seen on ravelry? (the picture links to jench1n’s page on her venezia pullover…awesome!)