Scarves

This is a simple scarf I made last week, using Sailor’s Rib:

Pattern: own
Stitch pattern: Sailor’s Rib (Barbara Walker’s Second Treasury, page 4)
Yarn: Tess’ Designer Yarns Cultivated Silk & Wool, 50% silk, 50% wool, no color name or number, no dye lot
Needles: size 6
Size: 5.25″ x 44″ after blocking
Started 6/28 and finished 7/3/2008

I cast on with cable cast-on and bound off with Elizabeth Zimmermann’s casting-on casting-off (p.24 of Knitting Without Tears). I am very happy with how this turned out visually as the two ends are nearly identical.

The yarn pooled a little in an interesting way, giving an almost zig-zag effect between light peach and dark peach. I have another skein of this in turquoise but have not yet decided what I will do with it. This scarf is on the short side so probably not another scarf.

The reverse of the Sailor’s Rib pattern is interesting, too. Right side of the pattern is on the left, wrong side on the right:

Yesterday’s Rising Bubbles scarf is based in garter stitch, so no purling, but if you’re new to knitting or to using yarn overs to create holes, you may not know exactly how to deliberately offset your yarn overs to create a diagonal line of holes.

You can tell you are on even-numbered row in the pattern when, with the work facing you, the diagonal line slants to the right. The other way to tell is to look at the yarn over. It will be really loose, just the yarn over with no knit stitch above it. The pencil points to the loose yarn over stitch that needs to be knitted (click for big):

Once you are on an odd-numbered row, you need to know where to place your yarn overs. To offset yarn overs and create the diagonal line of holes, you need to work them one stitch to the left of where you worked the yarn over in the previous odd-numbered row. In this photo, the pencil points to the knitted stitch directly above the yarn over worked in the previous even-numbered row. Knit this stitch, then work a yarn over, knit 2 together on the next two stitches:

This is what the completed yarn over, knit 2 together looks like. The pencil points to the yarn over:

Now, how can you tell when you are ready to begin with row 1 again, especially if you’ve changed the stitch count? In particular for this scarf, you start a new pattern repeat when you have 6 garter stitch stitches to the right of the yarn overs as you go to begin a new odd-numbered row. In this photo, ready to begin an odd-numbered row, the pencil points to the 7th stitch, the knit stitch above the previous yarn over. This indicates it’s time to start with row 1 again, placing the 2nd yarn over in the row one stitch to the left of where the pencil points:

The blue scarf is done and as someone in my knitting group wanted the pattern, I wrote it up and put it in the sidebar. Although it was sunny yesterday, the wind was still too much for a lightweight scarf. It’s hard to take a decent photo of a swiftly moving object. At first Mr. MmmYarn held the scarf in place so it wouldn’t whirl around quite so much:

But then I remembered our camera has a rapid-fire setting to take many photos in quick succession and came up with a good photo among many, many wind-blown ones. A supportive bush was also helpful in accomplishing the task:

Pattern: own: Rising Bubbles, available as a free PDF download in the sidebar
Yarn: 1 skein Louet Sales Kidlin Pixie Lace Weight (50g and 250 yards per skein); 49% linen, 35% kid mohair, 16% nylon; color 65-1162-3 Flag Blue
Needles: size 4
Size: 6″ x 53″ before blocking, 7″ x 65″ after blocking
Started 6/22/2008 and finished 7/3/2008

This is an easy garter stitch scarf, no purling at all. The diagonal yarn over pattern is worked only on even-numbered rows so this makes great mindless knitting once you either understand the pattern or have it memorized.

The linen in Kidlin Pixie made this scarf a little stiffer than I like, but washing it made it more pliable. I made a couple of these scarves in Crystal Place Kid Merino and Rowan Kidsilk Spray last year. Here are the photos again so you can see what Rising Bubbles looks like in variegated yarns:

Coming tomorrow to help those of you new to working with yarn overs, a tutorial on how to tell where you are in the pattern.

Walking from the bus stop to work this morning, I spied a van with intriguing words printed on its side. “Spinning” caught my eye first. Then “Carding.” Woohoo! Then “Rowing.” Uh, wait a second. “Rowing”? Shouldn’t it be “Rooing” if they’re providing wooly services? Well, yes, maybe — if it had been a mobile fiber arts van. A second glance revealed the second word wasn’t “carding,” it was “cardio,” and the van belonged to a local gym. Sheesh, talk about seeing what you want to see. I giggled at myself for at least a block. But really, whenever I see “spinning,” I think yarn, not bicycles.

The bus scarf grows:

Sunday evening’s stash dive did not bring stellar results. When faced with a very short time to pick a project for Monday morning’s bus ride, I end up with something that’s OK, not great. This week’s project, a super simple slanting yarn over scarf made in a mohair and linen blend:

It turns out I can bang out 4 to 5 inches per ride so it will be finished soon. Then the process will start again: ”It’s Sunday night. What will I knit on the bus tomorrow?” Sunday night is a weekly event, yet it never ceases to surprise me.

While paging through A Treasury of Knitting Patterns by Barbara Walker, this rib stitch caught my eye as a good possibility for a scarf. I found some green alpaca yarn in the stash and swatched until I got a width I liked. I added a one-stitch selvedge in garter stitch to frame the pattern. This is a shade of green I can’t wear but like to look at, making the knitting go quickly.

The pattern for this scarf is available as a free PDF file in the sidebar under the Free Pattern header.

Pattern: own - available on the Free Patterns page (see link in sidebar)
Yarn: 3 skeins Misti Alpaca Worsted, 100% baby alpaca, color 7238
Needles: size 7
Size: 5″ x 55″
Started 5/9/2008 and finished 5/18/2008

Mr. MmmYarn filmed me making the P1 K1 P1 into the same stitch since I could not find an existing one online. This is my very first YouTube upload. Bloglines readers, there is a video embedded here (you need to click on the post’s title to view this post outside Bloglines and see the video).

The black sparkly scarf is done:

Pattern: own (hardly a pattern: it’s plain old garter stitch)
Yarn: 2 skeins Crystal Palace Yarns Fizz Stardust, 86% polyester, 14% Lurex, color 3729
Needles: size 6
Size: 5.5″ x 56″
Started May 2 and finished May 8, 2008

A second scarf beckoned when I finished the black one and is well underway after two bus rides of swatching yesterday and some work on it last night. Mmm… green alpaca:

I have been playing some more in Ravelry, admiring everyone’s projects and inputting mine. I decided not to attempt to catalogue my commercially-bought stash in there (gads, just photographing each skein would be a huge undertaking, never mind all the input) but I have been putting in my handspun so I can see it all in one place. It turns out I have more handspun than I thought.

After a week of knitting with mostly little needles at home and two-handed stranded knitting on the bus, yesterday I succumbed to the joy of simple garter stitch on medium needles. There’s not much to show yet, but it’s nice to work on something mindless for a bit. Although I can and do work lace and cables and other techniques I’ve heard other knitters call advanced doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy something simple, too:

Just two days ago I learned the Yarn Harlot was going to be speaking at the Maker Faire in San Mateo today, but I couldn’t stomach yet another day of driving after 5 weekends in a row with lots of driving. Not to mention the fuel bill. So we’re out getting haircuts and the scarf and I are waiting for my turn in the chair.

I still have to measure the washed Jamieson’s swatches which is probably what I’ll do tonight. But I have a feeling I might end up reading the new Interweave Knits that showed up in the mailbox instead.

We saw a break in the rain Saturday so I hauled finished items downstairs to get photos. The stripes on the linen scarf still remind me of exercise wear but I like how bold they are:

Pattern: own
Stitch pattern: Feather Faggot from Barbara Walker’s First Treasury, page 185
Yarn: Euroflax 100% linen yarn, 3/4 skein black (color 18-2223-17) and 3/4 skein hot pink (color 18-1234-1)
Needles: size 4
Size: 6″ x 72″

Although the non-elastic yarn was rough on my hands, I enjoyed working with it.

I joined the colors by twisting the yarns around each other at each color change, just as you would when working intarsia. Remembering to always bring the new color under the old one on right-side rows and over rather than under on the wrong-side rows prevents tangling and also creates a neat little ladder of color changes on the wrong side:

Working with linen reminded me of something I read a while back in Spin Span Spun by Bette Hochberg, something that really boggled my mind. A little explanation first: linen and cotton were (and still are, I suppose) fibers commonly used when creating something that needed to be strong but not necessarily warm. Linen was often used in sails. And the thing that really got me: the Phoenicians and the Romans and the Vikings and all those old pre-Industrial Revolution world explorers you learned about in elementary school sailed the Seven Seas in ships that had very large sails… and all those sails were made of handspun thread that was then handwoven into the sail fabric. Amazing.

I haven’t spun with linen yet. I wonder how hard it is. I tried spinning from a cotton ball once, spectacularly unsuccessfully.

This week’s bus knitting looks very festive:

Just a quick post today.

The scarf is about 5 feet long now. And I’m getting a little sick of it, too, as the linen is rough on my hands. Here it is before my lunch break today:

And I’m starting to feel like some sort of sock machine:

This is sock #2 finished and #5 started, for those of you who are counting. The look of the finished sock in this photo reminds me of the elephant inside the snake in The Little Prince, but the bump here is the remainder of the skein and not a tiny pachyderm. I am not going to graft any of these until my mom tries them on so I am also not cutting any yarn until then (if I have to lengthen any of these socks, why weave in more ends than necessary?); tucking the remainder inside the finished sock seems the easiest method of storage.