scarves - they're the new socks!

  

  



Jilly scarf (free pattern to Rowan members) in Manos Cotton Stria
Ruffles scarf from Scarf Style in Debbie Bliss cotton aran
funky scarf in various handspun yarns (not spun by me though!)
Karabella ring scarf and hat in Aurora 8
and Melody's shawl from Morehouse Merino in their variegated laceweight yarn

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Halloween knitting is back on! I've started the fronts of the costumes, but to reduce strain on my wrists, I've picked out a few small projects in different gauges to knit between Thing sessions. Since I'm teaching my beginners "hat" class over the next few weeks, I decided to start with a hat. And the hat I most wanted to knit was the matching hat to my funky handspun scarf.

I used the wonderfully soft merino/angora Jamie Harmon hand spun and dyed yarn I got at Rhinebeck. In addition to selling the beautiful large hanks of variegated, striping yarns, she also sells small hank-lets of just 30 yds of one color. I got one in the peachy-pink color for the edge of the hat. I really love how all the yarns and pieces of the set go together, but aren't completely matchy-matchy. It's been so much fun creating this set that I've got some more yarn (not handspun, but commercial yarn) picked out to make another funky scarf and hat.

Sometime after Halloween of course.

getting dressed and clearing out the nasal passages

some last minute practice

pictures with the groom

ring bearers on duty

warming up the dance floor
(yes, they are the blurs)

And how was the shawl, you ask?

whoops, found a loose end an hour before go time

me likey

Now, I call that a success. Congrats to everyone!

The "Melody" shawl survived its soak and block. Here it is just the slightest bit damp still, resting on the chair in front of the desk with my knitting stuff (note ball winder!). The twisted stitch "steeks" are brilliant. They hold the stitches perfectly so there's no unravelling.

And here she is all finished. And just in time too! I plan to wear her this weekend at Shannon's wedding*. Evening outdoor wedding + a strapless dress = gonna need a shawl. And since Shannon gave me the kit, it seemed like the perfect wrap to bring with.

The boys helped out with the photography again, which means a lot of fun pictures for you. At first B took a picture of his feet. It does show the fringe pretty well actually. Then S took a nice picture of me, but not much shawl. Finally, S took the winner above and B the pretty shot below.

That's a lot of knitting in that there shawl (look at how long she is), but it really was a delight. The Morehouse laceweight is such a pleasure to knit with and is wonderfully soft and feather-light. I may have to get some more of this when I go to Rhinebeck!

* (I'll miss a few posts this holiday weekend, as we'll be busy with wedding events. But I promise adorable twin ring bearer pictures when we get back!)

can you see the apple?

The weather has been so gorgeous that we, and apparently every other kid in the Metro Boston area (don't these kids have to go to school?), decided to go apple picking at Marino Lookout Farm. They have a train to take you through the orchard, a hay maze, and wonderful grape canopes over the walkways through the orchard. (Funny, I didn't take any pictures of the apples.)

"a little higher mommy - I can almost reach them!"

If I could pick yarn off a vine, this is what I'd pick.

This gorgeous hand-dyed yarn was sent to me by Jo (she knits such lovely things - go see!) all the way from Australia. This is going to make one beautiful scarf! And although yarn may not grow on trees around here, it looks like the scarves do!

I can't wait to add this grape scarf to the vine. Thanks, Jo!

Now the Morehouse Merino shawl gets interesting. I finished the miles of stockinette last night and then I got to do this!

I bound off all the stitches, except those between the steeks. I pulled the yarn out of those pretty little rows until there was a rather shocking gap in my knitting. Even hubby looked worried.

And then I cut 'em! Either we've got a scarf with fringe or we've got trouble. She needs a soak and a block and then we'll know for sure.

B & S at the 2005 Boston Knit-Out. The boys watched the Show and Share from above.

What can I say, the boys loooove wheels! They had no interest in the vendor tents, but the spinning wheels were a different story. B even got some roving from one of the friendly spinners. "I love purple. I love yarn." That's my boy.

Although the park was full of knitters, the boys only wanted pretzels and the nearby playground.

So I had to wait until Knitsmiths to get some knitting done.

Mmmm, that shawl is looking so yummy. And that yarn ball from the 800 yd skein is finally looking conquerable.

(My apologies to those who said hi to me while I was being pulled through the knit-out at top speed by the boys. I was a little distracted. A proper hello to you all. Drop me a note in the comments!)

In the evenings, I've been knitting along on my Morehouse Merino shawl. It's easy peasy to knit (stockinette in the round), but with over 250 stitches it's slow-going. Still, over a few quiet evenings talking with the in-laws, I have made some visible progress. The Germans have been very curious to hear what it is that I'm knitting that is so large and knit in the round. It's so exciting to explain how it's knit in the round and then cut at one point to make a scarf with fringe. Too cool!

Judging from the size of the remaining yarn ball, I'm probably between a quarter and a third done with the knitting. Can I finish it in two weeks?

I had a little homework for the store to finish up before we leave for Germany next week. First the Karabella side-to-side scarf that I was knitting while reading the last few hundred pages of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.

Oh yeah, there's a matching hat! Isn't it cute?! The pattern ("Ring Hat and Scarf") is so clever, with simple patterning and lots of great colors. And the Aurora 8 is such a lovely yarn: yummy to knit with and blocked out soft and beautiful. Love it!

No, I didn't knit this one. Just a little finishing job for the store: a little seaming, a few edgings, and a good blocking. It's a cute design (the Tropical Tee from Oat Couture). It's one of those patterns that I like a lot more after seeing it in person than I ever would have thought from only seeing the pattern pic or schematic. Looks like a great, easy knitting project for beginners. Well, except for the finishing, apparently.

Necessity has forced me to figure out a way to knit and read at the same time.

I've got so much knitting to do before we leave for our trip to Germany - including knitting this Karabella scarf for the store - that I have been feeling slightly guilty putting it all down each night to squeeze in a little Harry Potter Book 6 reading before bed. I've been trying to knit a little, blog a little, and then read a little each night, making steady progress on my projects and savoring the new book as slowly as I could stand. And I was succeeding, that is until fellow knitsmith and Harry Potter fan, Shireen, who when I saw her just this Saturday at the store was still 200 pages behind me in the book, came in to Knitsmiths knitting group yesterday and told me she was done with the book and I had to finish it. She seemed serious.

So, I just finished. We may now discuss.

ATTENTION: I'm not filtering these comments for spoilers, so those of you who aren't done yet, don't look!

My funky handspun scarf is done!! I love it so much it makes me giddy. It is, by far, the coolest thing I've ever made. And it's such a surprise, even to myself, that I like it so much.

The yarns (starting at bottom left of picture) are handspun wool from misshawklet, handspun merino and angora by Jamie Harmon, which I found at Downtown Yarns in NYC, and some beautiful "Rose Garden" handspun merino by Julie Lovelace that Maggi sent me from Virginia. (Thanks Maggi!) It was the exact right color for this scarf. Seriously, look!

After adding it, I thought that the last three yarns I'd used worked so well together that I had second thoughts about the chunkier and funkier skein I'd used at the start (you can see an earlier pic here). So I undid it at the color change, unravelled it and turned it into big, huge, hideous fringe.

Funk-ing a!

I am pleased to report that the birthday scarves were finished in NYC on time and happily received. Mom's roommate "Woody" was even able to model them for their final picture.

And, there's another NYC project that I was rushing to get done for the trip. A secret one.

Surprise! It's a honeymoon cami for bride-to-be, Shannon, who had her shower in the big city this weekend.

I knit the cami in Debbie Bliss Cathay in the prettiest orange - because Shannon LOVES orange. It is so soft and silky against the skin. I know this because I had to try it on many times during the knitting. Cathay, as my knitbud Kathy (of Cathay Tivoli tee fame) first told me, grows with its first washing and then later with wear. And it does. This will be one of the only times I say this (because I am bad-example-non-swatching-never-blocking knitting girl and would never tell others to do things that I am too lazy to do, even if they are the "right" things to do), but if you use this yarn (and there's no reason why you shouldn't - it's a delight) definitely knit a swatch and wash it before you start knitting.

Now, I can't wait to see it on Shannon!

(PS - More on my trip to NYC, including all the YARN SHOPPING, after tomorrow's sock update!)

Scarves as of travel time Friday evening:

Three balls of cotton angora knit and I decided it's long enough and bound off. It's twice as long as the longest Lego construction in our house - that's a total of 68 inches acording to the sheep measure.

Two hanks of each color of the cotton stria and the jilly scarf is even longer! The points needed to be blocked out flat though.

On the road to NYC:

there goes that crazy Fung Wah bus

sockapal-2-za sock underway!

I'm scarfing as fast as I can, working hard to make my weekend deadline.

I need to knit a couple more feet of ruffles, so the scarf can be wrapped twice around the neck. The candy cane scarf just makes it around the neck twice at this point, so I only need to knit about one more foot for the tail.

I am having way too much fun knitting these scarves! So different from knitting a top. All the pressure of getting the fit right and all the fuss of getting the finishing right are gone, gone, gone. It's just pure knitting. How delightful!

S is for super funky scarf

My handspun scarf is fun-ky! I've knit almost all the handspun I have, so I'll have to wait until I get more to keep knitting this one. I hadn't meant to knit it all so quickly, but the power went out again last week after yet another intense storm and as it was only 9pm, I wanted to knit. But what can you knit in the dark by candlelight? Not my lace shrug. Not the short row scarf. Uneven handspun in uneven stockinette was perfect.

And you know what will go perfectly with the funky scarf? My new funky hat.

Minne Pearl, watch out!

I didn't knit it. It was an older store model that was on sale since the store doesn't carry the Cartoon yarn anymore. I slipped it on when I saw it and simply couldn't take it off. It's so fun to wear!

Speaking of funky hats...

a mutual love of funky hats will not save your marriage

I've been watching reruns of The Amazing Race on GSN and I'd totally forgotten about all the knit hats that some of the teams wore in the second season. They all must have had the same idea about wearing a cool hat to cover race-hair. Tara's hat is by far the funkiest, with all kinds of different yarns all mixed together. The hat her ex-husband, Wil, wears is practically gourd-shaped, which does as much to make him look like a joke as the producers did in their editing. My favorite hat however is Paige's. It's got this sort of subtle spiral thing going on that's way cool, see? One of the winners, Chris, also often wears a knit hat, but I wouldn't call it funky. Oh well, I guess funky wool hats don't count for much in a race. Even when the finish line is on a sheep farm.

You know, I never really knit scarves before. As a beginning knitter, I didn't start with scarves like many people do. Don't know why, just sort of jumped into blankets and sweaters. And now I find myself knitting scarves like mad. Must be some sort of attempt to make up for my missed knitting childhood, I guess.

This lovely yarn is Morehouse Merino lace weight for their Melody shawl. Shannon made this last year (picked it up when we visited Rhinebeck) and it is fabulous. She got me the kit for my birthday this year. Thanks Shannon!

Another scarf for the store. This is a Karabella pattern to be knit in their own Aurora 8 yarn. Yum! I've never knit with this yarn before, but I've heard wonderful things about it, so I'm very excited to get started.

Hmmmm.... what could that be for? I just can't turn down a good deal on Harry Potter colors. The Jo Sharp was on mega 50% off sale at my LYS and, as for the Lion Brand, can I help it if Lion Brand makes the perfect Gryffindor gold?

I also just ordered this neat felted Waterfall scarf pattern from Pick Up Sticks. Is that not the coolest thing you can imagine making with Cascade 220?

Okay, it's a shrug and not a scarf, but I couldn't help myself.

I'm halfway through the feather and fan shrug. Still haven't sewn up the entire armhole, so I have to sort of hold it together at the underarm to get the full effect. She is pretty, though, isn't she? I'm hoping to have her all done in time to wear on my next trip down to NYC (and to Downtown Yarns, where I got the pattern) in two weeks. I need to finish my two other scarves - the candy cane scarf and the ruffles scarf - for that trip too, since they are birthday presents.

The lace is lovely, blue and deep
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to knit before I sleep,
And miles to knit before I sleep.

Well, I think the trials of my candy cane scarf may finally be behind me. I'm paying more attention now and haven't missed any increases or decreases in at least thirty repeats. Now I'm quite pleased with how this scarf is turning out. The Manos Stria has such a nice combination of bumpy, crinkley looking texture and slight uneveness in the color dyeing. They really complement each other well. And a try-on reveals that the diagonal construction makes it drape perfectly for a scarf.

Don't you just love it when yarn and pattern and project come together perfectly?

I'm starting a new scarf. (Scarves, they're the new socks!) This one is the Ruffles scarf from Scarf Style. I've wanted to make this scarf since I first saw it in the book, but kept thinking it just wasn't me. Took me a year to figure out I could make one for someone else!

I'm using a few balls of cotton angora that I have left over from mom's Jess sweater and am making the scarf for her friend. I've made a couple of pairs of socks for this friend and she's been very appreciative (best way to get yourself some more handknits, right?). Plus, she said she really liked the yarn in mom's sweater. So she gets a scarf out of it. The pattern is really fun to knit and it'll look great on her.

I've been winding yarn. Some handspun yarn, to be exact. Not spun by me, of course. Nope, winding is as close as I'll ever get. The handspun balls are two little mini-skeins of wool from misshawklet, that fellow Knitsmith Lisa found at the Bizarre Bazaar here in Boston, and a skein of angora/merino by Jamie Harmon that I found at Downtown Yarns. I had this idea of collecting a few random skeins of handspun for a long, funky scarf. I'm still looking for one or two more, but after seeing these fun yarns sit on my desk for months, I couldn't wait anymore to wind them up and get started.

And check out this neat new knitting t-shirt from knitiot that we just got in at my LYS.

They have lots of other funny knitting tees and they are sooo cool. We sold three on the very first day we had them in!

The candy cane Jilly scarf is getting bigger.

In two directions, as B is helpfully demonstrating. Yes, as I've been knitting along late at night (watching the reruns of Amazing Race on the Game Show Network mostly), and working the K2tog/M1 pattern that creates the diagonal shape, I've forgotten the K2tog a few (okay, 5) times. Over 3 feet, that's not such a bad percentage, right??

Can you see how it gets wider there in the middle? Look closely. Oops!

And no, I'm not going back to "fix" this mistake either. Here's why. As I was about a foot in, I thought the scarf might be a smidge on the narrow side. I didn't notice that the scarf was wider until the first two balls of yarn ended (that's three feet I got out of two balls of yarn!) and then I just sort of thought, oh this isn't too narrow at all. Only after I counted the stitches and laid the scarf out flat (something you never really do with a scarf) did I see that I'd missed a few decreases. I'm planning to keep the scarf this wide for about another foot, then intentionally forget to do some (well, 5) increases over the following 3 feet. That way the scarf will be wider in the middle where it wraps around the neck and a tad narrower at the ends where the extra fabric simply hangs down. Brilliant!

Moral of the story: I am a giant knitting dork.

New project alert!

It's the beginnings of a Jilly scarf (the pattern is in the Free Pattern Archive for Rowan subscribers). My mom picked out the yarn, Manos Cotton Stria, last year on my first trip to Downtown Yarns. She loved the look and feel of the Stria and got a kick out of the red and the white together. We instantly thought candy cane stripes and I remembered that I had at least one pattern for a nice, stripy scarf (besides this one, there is a chunky-gauged version in Rowan Junior). We excitedly purchased the yarn. Then, as so often happens, it got tucked away for a year (to ripen? to cure? who knows what it does while we neglect it?). I did think about starting it several times, but have to admit that the thought of winding all those hanks into balls led me to tuck it away again and again. Now that the boys LOVE winding yarn (in fact, I like to have some yarn ready for winding in case the boys start to get wild and need a way to redirect their energies) and mom's birthday is once again approaching, it is time.

It doesn't hurt either that I've absolutely fallen in love with long scarves. This one should end up looooooong, since I have about a foot so far and have barely made a dent in the first two of six balls. This is so much fun!