Category: Scarves, Hats, Gloves

The Prism Scarf is done and the greens in the yarn are a perfect match for an ancient, unstructured, Irish tweed coat that seems to be in permanent rotation in my coat closet.

The neckline is fairly wide and low on this coat and I have had trouble over the years finding just the right scarf.  I like the combination of the fluffy chenille with the rather rustic tweed and unstrutured style.  The little bits of gitter in the yarn are just enough that it doesn’t look too rustic — as if I were traipsing over the hills  to sell my eggs at the next village — the reason I never wear a cabled scarf with this coat, and at the same time it is not too formal, it fits the attitude of the coat, at least as I wear it.

So, I suppose it was fate at work last week when my knitting stopped and the shopping demon temporarily overtook my brain.  Now I can brave the elements with dash and daring, if not au courant style. 

Nearly a week after finishing the knitting portion, the last sleeve of Rogue is on the blocking board:

And the "smile" scarf, made from, you guessed it,  Reynolds Smile is also done:

G  thinks I should knit another, with two skeins for myself, and I still think it would make a lovely coat, but this scarf has satisfied my knitting craving with this yarn.  I think too much of a good thing is not wise and I am quite satisfied with the results. Of course this is no guarantee that some of this yarn will not end up in my basket someday.  It is always dangerous to make proclamations about what one will and will not knit.   A pile of smile might yet leap up and attack me, determined to be my next fall coat.

As for the lovely violet Zephyr yarn, it has spoken and informed me that it wants to be a shawl.  Now, I know that those of you who are wiser than I may smile to yourselves right now and think that you knew all along that it was destined to be a shawl.  But I am not always so wise.  I still think it would make a lovely sweater.  The swatching effort yielded a most satisfactory result at 10 stitches/inch, much too small of a guage to yield a sweater with a mere 1200 yards.  This is also much too fussy for my currently adlepated state of mind.  Besides this fabric is so light and drapey that one would not want the garment to be too snug and close-fitting; the results would be much to suggestive of undergarments.  You would need some drape to experience the full beauty of the fabric.  I can imagine it in some Zoran inspired garment, or in a basic top inspired by the light as air and luxurious sweaters knitted for Hermes.  Of course, those are machine knits, but there is no reason I cannot aspire to similar luxury in a hand knit.  Nonetheless, such dreams will not be met with the yarn at hand and other alternatives beckon.

Now I just have to find the right shawl pattern.

Finally, a lace scarf on the blocking board:

and quickly off again. 

I fought knitting lace far too long.  I am smitten I tell you, smitten!  After the initial set-backs, and I am still such a scatterbrained ninny at times that I need some mindless projects floating around, I was entranced.  I eagerly looked forward to every little row of the simple, embarrassingly fool proof (what kind of fool am I to mess this up) pattern. 

It didn’t look like much off the needles.  I knew, having read enough, that the magic of lace comes with the blocking.  But I didn’t believe until I saw it blocked, and felt the delicate scarf drying in my hands as I ran the blocking pins along the edges.

Too bad there is a limited use for lace scarves and shawls in my life.  That probably won’t stop me…look at the sock yarn I have accumulated.  I enjoy knitting socks I just don’t wear socks much (except to the gym).  Why not knit lace?

The lacy mohair scarf is done.  Actually it has been done for several days but has been curled up into a ball behind my computer monitor where it is out of the way and safe.  It should have been blocking by now, but there has been no space to block.

The new cutting table which I really do intend to keep clean except when I am working on it is covered with stuff.  Well technically I am working on it, I am still sorting out all the STUFF that I had and still want to have in my sewing room.  How did I acquire all these things?  What perverse creature takes over my brain when I walk near a yarn shop, a fiber shop, or a fabric shop.  What was I thinking?  But I love it all – it is a sickness, a disease, and definitely heritable.  When I look at my family I can see where it all comes from and where it all goes as well.  I never stood a chance….

I could’ve put the blocking board on the floor but then I would have to walk on it to sort through all the stuff and the pins would probably be painful on my usually bare feet, not to mention requiring a trip to the emergency room…

I could have put it on the guest bed but I have all the unread books there, the ones that were piled up in my sewing/fiber room, that I decided don’t belong there.  They belong in the library but that means building new bookshelves and I have no idea when I will get around to that…

I could have put it in the guest bathroom, but I have handwash hanging there and I don’t want it to drip on the scarf.  I am behind on handwash too – had one of those weeks where I spilled everything all over myself.  I was practically a walking waste site.

I could of put it on my bed, but Tabasco would object, or decide she really needed to sleep on my scarf.  If it hadn’t dried in time I am not sure G would have enjoyed sleeping under a blocking scarf either and the pins might have been uncomfortable.

I could have put it on the kitchen island….really bad idea.  There is one of those laws, I’m sure,  you know, the one that goes “if a mohair scarf is in the kitchen the spaghetti sauce will be dumped all over it”…

And what of Rogue?  Abandoned for a new love, a lovely soft scarf of GGH Soft Kid.

Truth be told, this project was started while Rogue was itself unavailable — waiting for space on the cutting table to set up the blocking board and measure the sleeve length — unwilling to commit to another sleeve until we were sure the first was a good fit.  By then, by the time we knew it was a match well made, it was too late.  Soft kid had captured me.

It was not an easy start.  The lure of the soft yarn was strong.  The pattern is simple, a printout distributed by Amazing Threads with purchase of the yarn.  Start up was a little rocky though.  I have knitted lace trims on sweaters in the form of edges on cardigans, decorative borders, even bits of firm cotton lace to adorn sewing projects, but this, this was something new.  I was not sure we were destined for each other.  Fine yarns on large needles seemed uncomfortable in the hands, the stitches twisted and turned, avoiding easy knitting.  This is definitely not a project to be knit in the dark in the car.

And yet, once a few inches were completed, enough to see a pattern emerging, the charm of the work took over, the easy repetition of the pattern, the attention needed yields such lovely rewards.  Not mindless knitting this, yet totally entrancing.  I am hooked, sitting in my chair late at night churning out a few more rows.  Even tonight, falling asleep between rows, head lolling back on the strings of the hammock chair now rigged up in my fiber room, the enchantment remains strong.  I was at least awake enough to tink the last two rows, accounting for the dropped stitches just made, aware enough to stop and put the knitting aside until tomorrow.

Rogue will return.  The thrill of a simple lace scarf has won my heart for now.

Pattern: Wavy Scarves
from Knitters Magazine # 69, Winter 2002.
Yarn:Noro Silk Garden, color 230

I love this scarf and its variations and I have made many
versions in the past few years. I
especially love making it in hand-dyed and variegated yarns, especially Noro.

This scarf is meant to be a gift or donation. It was intended for a child, to be added to
my donation box for next winter, as this winter’s contributions have long since
left the house. I admittedly bought the
two skeins of silk garden used here, a bit of an extravagance for a scarf to be
donated to unfortunate children, but a lovely indulgence for the knitter. I love the colors of Noro. Yarn Swift always seems to have a tempting
array of Noro colors when I walk in, candy for this knitter. 

This color combination is not one I could easily wear, at least not close to my face, but I still love the colors.  I can certainly indulge in knitting it for someone else. A $20 purchase of yarn for a scarf to be donated to inner city children is more than many would spend and may be excessive.  The color may not what most children would chose, but on that I am no judge.  Is $20 too much to spend for the privelege of spending 7 to 8 hours of pure pleasure knitting an interesting pattern in a yarn whose color changes bring me unexpected joy?  I didn’t think so.  I do think I am much too easily pleased.

There is no sunshine today, just rain and more rain. A halogen bulb and fig tree will have to do
for props.

Most of this was done on the train to and from NYC on
Friday. There was very little done on
the weekend, which was highly stressful and, thankfully, done with. The scarf is about 2/3 done; 2/3 of that was
done on Friday, the other third in a couple of hours of insomnia very early
this morning. Today is filled with gym,
work, and more contractor visits, but I have high hopes of finishing this scarf
as well.

All progress stopped on the
green and blue scarf. I still adore the
colors, but the scarf was looking ratty and I was not happy with it. From a
distance the color combination and texture is nice, but up close, all the
little loose threads annoy. I am such a
fiber/color driven knitter that it is always a disappointment when something I
fall in love with in the skein does not work out.

In this case however I am
realizing that the problem may be partly due the pattern I am using but is more
probably related to the Plymouth yarn, the Carombolo, which is hairy with little bits of fiber sticking out all
over it. This kind of yarn often gives
me troubles and I should have thought about this sooner. The original affair, with the Great
Adirondack yarn, is not really affected here. I still ADORE this yarn, looking at it…touching it….ahhhh…pleasure. The Plymouth yarn is only filler, no emotional investment here,
and it can easily be eliminated.

The trick here will be
separating the Great Adirondack from its evil companion, which in true nasty
yarn fashion has twisted itself interminably around the Great Adirondack yarn
making the unwinding a very unwieldy process. As I start to separate the two yarns into separate skeins, the Carombolo
twists and winds and makes a veritable rat’s nest that will take hours to undo.

I knew there was a reason
that I don’t usually wind yarns together even when planning on knitting them
together. Live and learn.

As I don’t have the patience
required for that kind of endeavor at the moment, it is on hold. Besides the yarn IS beautiful all balled up…

The little hairy bits are
quite evident here as well, but they look nicer in the ball, not so nice
knitted up.

I think I will save this for
the moment as an object of art in my sewing/knitting room. Perhaps I could eventually work out a little
display of yarns that are beautiful in their own right, which may or may not be
knitted up eventually. There are
certainly yarns that I find are much more beautiful in the skein than in the
sweater, Prism’s Stuff immediately comes
to mind, beautiful each time I see it, but far to fluffy and hairy for me to
actually live with in a garment. It’s
awfully expensive too, at least if I think of it as yarn I will not use. If I start to think of these things as art,
as something beautiful in their own right, the perspective, and the price point
analysis changes. We have certainly
spent more money on things that have brought less pleasure.

Worth thinking about, don’t
you think?