Noro Jag

Ah, Spring. The time when a knitter's fancy turns to thoughts of Noro...or is that just me?

I'm on another Noro jag. Happens every once in a while. Remember last year's must-have Noro Giant Granny Square? This year it's the Noro Log Cabin Blanket. The need to make one of these (Rav link) bit hard while I was in Lake Tahoe. And thanks to the internet, even though I couldn't make my intended pilgrimage to Jimmy Beans Wool in Reno (seems some of the males in my household don't see the necessity of driving two hours round trip to visit a yarn shop from which I can order yarn online in a matter of seconds--party poopers, all of them), I discovered that Noro Yuzen has recently been put on clearance by a number of my favorite yarn pushers...uh, suppliers. I ordered mine from WEBS here, but it's also on sale at Little Knits.

This is a round about way of explaining that I bought a blanket's worth of Noro last week. Wanna make somethin' of it?

And here's the current progress:

I started two days ago and have discovered, despite all the other projects on the needles, that these little squares are a lot like potato chips: I can't have just one. In fact, I'm not sure anything else is going to get done until I've turned my entire supply of ever-changing Noro colorways into log cabin squares.


(Don't mind the wonkiness. I haven't blocked any of them yet.)

I bought two hanks each of ten different colorways. Each hank makes one 11-inch square on size 7 needles at 18 sts/4 inches in garter. Don't be fooled by the gauge listed on Noro yarns. It's always wrong. I don't know whether yarn gauge is measured differently in Japan or whether it's just a Noro thing, but I find the yarn is always at least one size larger than listed; in other words, this "dk" weight yarn is really a worsted/aran weight yarn.

In case anyone is of a similar mind, these squares are wicked easy to make. After the first one, you don't need anything resembling a pattern to whip them out, and you may not even have to look at your hands, if you can resist staring at the color changes.

I worked this one sitting in Younger Son's academic awards ceremony today (honor roll-yay!).

He's the one on the far right. Congratulations, Goober!