More Icy Days

Mohair/Shetland Crocheted Scarf

The pond has frozen, a sign that cold weather has settled in for the winter. I can hear the wind rumbling in the eaves, a dull roar that seems far away but makes odd corners of the house feel cold. Ice coats the grass after last night's storm. I looked out my bedroom window early to see that birds are already waiting for me to fill the feeders.

Yesterday hungry cats and the coarse cries of blue jays greeted me when I rounded the corner of the house toward the old apple tree. I moved the feeders a little so that the greedy jays couldn't keep the little birds away from all of them. Before I finished feeding the cats the birds were fluttering around the tree, snatching sunflower seeds and darting away.

Lat night I curled up in my warm sitting room and worked on a crocheted scarf, made from the Friendship Farms mohair/shetland roving that I dyed and spun into a two-ply yarn. This is a pattern I'd been fooling with for awhile. I knew the effect I wanted but was trying to use clusters of double crochet to achieve it. I didn't like the result but then I found this double crochet x-stitch in a recent crochet magazine and it suited the look exactly. There's a row of single crochet between the rows of x-stitch. I started to put a border on it but didn't like the way it looked, so I'm using the yarn that I reserved for the border to make the scarf a bit longer. I'm not sure it's going to want a fringe; I may just add a picot edge to the ends or something. I really like the shimmer of this yarn; there's a variation in color from light yellow to almost orange.