Finished poncho, Surreybelle Scarf, Seraphina's Shawl, and Noro Taiyo

Time for more photos! :) I finished the poncho for my 4-y/o niece. It looks really nice. I took it to Stitch & Bitch on Wednesday, and everyone seemed to like it. Not the best picture of the poncho, but this'll give you some idea of what it looks like:

It's made from Lion Homespun in colorway "Delft." I really, really like this colorway for my li'l niece; I hope she'll like it, too. I've been told that blue is her favorite color.

For a slight change of pace, I decided to pick up a project that had been hibernating for a while--the Surreybelle Scarf (pattern available as a free download on Ravelry). I brought it to S & B with me. I started working on it again, and quickly realized why it had been in hibernation for so long! First of all, the yarn is a real pain to work with. It's Cherry Tree Hill Zebra Caribe, which is made of a few strands plied together, and it's very, very splitty. Second, I'd been crocheting really tightly when I was working on it before. Like, serious hand-cramp tightness. When I started working on it again, I found that I no longer crochet that tightly--but in order to match my old gauge, I had to. OUCH. It sure is pretty, though:

I just hope I can get myself to finish it!

And finally, I'm trying to make Seraphina's Shawl for my grandmother for her birthday/Chanukah present. It was really, really difficult for me starting out. I printed out the directions from the link above, this version here, and the errata. Good grief. I got very confused. Now I seem to be doing OK, but it's still pretty hard to tell what I'm doing, since I'm using Lion Homespun again (I have so much of that stuff!) and it can be hard to tell if I'm crocheting in the right place (especially when it says to crochet into a ch-1 sp, since it's not always clear where those are!). I've made it through the 4th row:


Also, I tried to crochet some fingerless mitts with the gorgeous Noro Taiyo I have, and was incredibly disappointed in the yarn. I encountered some problems and had to frog, and this yarn is VERY difficult for frogging. It tangled, and it even broke in some places. It was awful. I've checked the projects others have made with it on Ravelry, and they seem to have done OK making all sorts of things...But I may wind up having to do something really simple with it, since I can't do anything with it that I might have to frog, since frogging it might just not work at all! *sigh*