I haven’t biked since November but…

I finished another project this week, a balaclava for wearing while biking. (I’m kind of a wimp about biking while there’s snow and ice on the road, but I do bike in cold spring and fall weather sometimes.) It’s from the pattern Anti-Freeze, by Jenna Adorno.

I didn’t make any customizations other than substituting the yarn to whichever black worsted I had on hand. It’s a pretty briliant pattern: it’s knit from the bottom up, using short row shaping to create the face. Kind of like the short row heel of a sock, if the heel was the back of your head, the toes were your face, and the foot was upside down? You know, like that. I am going to have to explore short rows some more, because I think there’s more things that can be done with them.

In other news, I am working on a pair of cabled armwarmers for my cousin at her request. I picked a cable stitch pattern from the Vogue cable stitch dictionary, and am reminding myself how cables work. I especially like cable stitches featuring isolated columns of knit stiches on a reverse stockingette background, where the columns meander around and intertwine. I want to work on designing my own like that. I may end up making a cabled version in my scarf series next.