I’ve received two knitting e-newsletters in the last couple of days. To recap…

Berroco

This week’s newsletter from Berroco features a couple different ripple scarves. If I were in the market for a nice warm scarf, I might consider making one of these Pastiche 2 scarves. It looks easy enough to be fairly mindless knitting, while being complicated enough not to bore me to death. I live in southern California, though, and don’t recall the last time I wore a warm scarf.

Tahki Stacey Charles

I’m not sure why I’m staying on Tahki’s email distribution. I haven’t actually liked any of the patterns they’ve featured. Take this pattern for example, knit with their Aiko yarn. Of all the lovely fibers they could have blended their cashmere with, why 20% nylon? It makes me think that they’re trying to make up for a substandard lot of cashmere that they bought.

There’s nothing really wrong with the sweater—I guess—but there isn’t one thing that I actually like about it. The model’s shoulders look tense, the single cable line up the center of her chest does nothing for her figure, and the grimace on her face makes me think she either wants to get away from the hot lights or out of the sweater as soon as possible. Or both. For a “fitted cable pullover” the sweater is lacking in obvious signs of being fitted, and sports just the one cable. Boring.

But that’s just my opinion.