While I'm waiting for Sarah to get the animals and me to get my new yarn, I finally got to work on the yarn JD gave me for Christmas and made brooklyntweed's Noro scarf. But before the pictures, I want to send some complaints out into the void directed towards Noro Eisaku: What the hell, Noro-shishou? It's not enough that your yarn be absolutely beatuiful. In the four balls of yarn my husband bought me for Christmas, I had to pick out a veritable pile of stems and flecks of leaves. Not only this, some of the skein wasn't even plied, and some of the skein was plied way to much. How am I supposed to keep gauge, Noro-shishou, if the yarn's not the same size? And, finally-- In all four balls, I encountered the above. Really? Not even fulled or felted together, but actually knotted? How is all of these problems worth eight dollars for a 50g ball? Maybe this is just a problem with Kureyon, I hope. Okay, now that that's done, let me say that Noro Kureyon is a flipping pain to knit with. It's really uneven and scratchy, and if you read my complaint to Noro-shishou, two different strands are knotted together at the end of every ball to make it to 50g, which makes for really sharp color changes sometimes. With all of that said, the colors made me drool. See? Noro yarns are self-striping, and I alternated two different colorways and striped those. Some close-ups of the stripes: Stats: Yarn--Noro Kureyon, two balls each of #185 and #150 Needles--size 8 straights