Sunday, October 16, 2005

The scarf that didn't seem to want to be; or A quest for the right pattern

A couple of weeks ago I decided to knit a scarf for Nyron's mom. Nyron's family doesn't celebrate Christmas but it's Ramadan this month and Eid, the end of Ramadan, is a good occation to give gifts. Nyron said that she doesn't really have a scarf so I went to Romni and found some merino wool in a gorgeous deep red colour that she likes. Everything was set for making a lovely scarf just in time for winter.

Some people talk about waiting until their yarn tells them what it wants to be. I don't know that I've ever had that happen, but this yarn definitely had some strong feelings about what it DIDN'T want to be! I started by trying the Feather and Fan pattern that I've seen some people use to make lovely scarves. That produced a scarf that buckled like a sheet of corregated metal which completely hid the pattern. So I used that as a excuse to buy a new book of stitch patterns and found three lovely flower motifs. One was done in reverse stocking stitch on a stocking stitch background, another used twisted stitches (which I've never done before) on a reverse stocking stitch background and the other had lots of eyelets. They were all beautiful, but proved to be far too complicated for what little brainpower I have left after work. At this point I learned that Extra 100% Australian Merino Wool doesn't withstand frogging very well. It started to literally fray and I would have to cut above the fray and start over again. Twice.

Now I've settled on a simple pattern of eyelets all the way across every row. It creates a neat effect of making the stitches on either side slant in opposite directions which curls the scarf into a coil. It's starting to look very cool and will be very warm for Nyron's mom.

=^_^=

2 Comments:

At 3:35 a.m., Blogger Divinity said...

Is that a variation on the Curly-Whirly Scarf? I just did one in Touch Yarns boucle. Casting on 700 wasn't the tedious part...

 
At 4:21 p.m., Blogger Little Knittin' Kitten said...

No, I knit from bottom to top, not side to side. It's just a repeat of k1, *yo, k2tog* k1 for every row on an even number of stitches. The k1s at either end are because it's too hard to yarn over as the first action of the first stitch. It makes the knit stitches slant in opposite directions on both sides (ie, one side slanting in one direction, the other side in the other) which causes it to twist around itself.

 

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