accessories: December 2007 Archives

This one's a gift, so the post is behind the cut...

pattern my own
yarn springwater fiber workshop handdyed wool silk bought at MDSW 2005 (yay for stashbusting)
needles US #8 / 5.0 mm knitpicks options, plus a size H crochet hook for the crochet cast on
techniques crochet cast on, suspended bind off. the edges look pretty similar, but not identical. the suspended bindoff retained as much stretch as the knitted area so i could stretch it out as much as i wanted.

I am inordinately happy with this little scarf.

It all started out with the desire to knit something that looked like it was knit on the bias, but was actually knit straight across. I tried a bunch of stitch patterns before coming up with the really simple one on my own (although it's too simple not to be in some stitch dictionary somewhere).

It's patterned every row and I think that adds to the drape. Even though you have to yo and decrease every row, it's simple enough that I didn't find it too hard to do while chatting or watching TV. To add to the TV-ability of this knit, I made all the decreases k2tog and p2tog because I find them easier to knit than ssk and (the snail's pace decrease) p2togtbl.

The edging took quite a few tries before I got it right as well. I borrowed liberally from two edgings in one of my lace books, merging what I liked best about them into one edging, and then fudging the numbers so they worked for my scarf.

My little mistake of starting out with an edging that was too short ended up being a good thing. I got to knit both edges to live stitches, instead of knitting the first edge and then picking up sts along one side to start knitting the center. There's something really addictive to that whole k2tog tbl to merge the edging with the center scarf. If I knit another one of these I think I'll cast on provisionally so I can do that again.

To finish it off, I soaked the scarf and smoothed it out on an ironing board under a ceiling fan to dry. I didn't pin it out at all. If I were to knit this in a laceweight I would block it more aggressively (especially the diamond points on the edges).

I kept pretty good notes while knitting it. If there's any interest I can put together a pattern for it -- let me know.