Progress on crochet projects

Here are some items I've been working on lately. I'll start with the only completed one...

Completed cashmere cowl

This is some beautiful yarn that I treated myself to with a gift certificate. (It's ArtYarns Cashmere, which - at $60 per skein - is the most expensive yarn I've ever purchased.)

The drape is really nice, but I wanted it to be tighter around the neck. I'm sure it'll be very nice for the office, though.

The joke with this one was that the yarn is so thin that I knitted and knitted, and it keps getting longer, but the ball of yarn never got any smaller. All of a sudden, though, it was gone. Thank god. Never again.

Temperature scarf

I've been shared the "temperature afghan" a few times, and basically the idea is that every row of the project represents a day in a year, and the color represents the temperature of that day. You end up with reds and oranges for summer, and deep blues and purples for winter. I've wanted to do one, and my college roommate thought it was a neat idea, so she's getting a temperature scarf. 

I looked up the average daily temperature for Ames, IA for 2015. I'm midway through June. The warmer colors beginning in March give me some hope for the next few months of weather.

In case anyone is wanting the pattern for this one, I did chevrons of 5 sc in a row, with 3 sc in one for the "hills" and skip 2 sc for the "valleys." When I'm done, I should be able to sew the ends together and have them "fit" by sewing one chevron into the other.

I can also tell it will be really really long. That's OK, it's cold in Iowa, right?

More Sophie...

Sophie continues, with Part 5...

And part 6...

And part 7...

She was really curling after round 7, as the author predicted, so I did block her by laying some books on the edges for a week or two.

As you can see, she's progressing nicely. I love making this blanket. I'm running out of some yarn colors though, specifically the canary yellow color and possibly magenta. I think I'm going to have to order more from the web.

Later I'll take photos of some close-ups of my favorite parts of Sophie. Some of the flowers and colorwork is really amazing.