Thursday, November 15, 2007

gift knitting (part 1)

Having a lot of people to thank means having a lot of gifts to knit. This is the first installment in a three-part series of gifts-for-my-recommenders.

First finished: wide ruffle scarf.


It's from a pattern in Knitting New Scarves that I altered slightly. I cut the total width of the scarf by 8 stitches, and cut each ruffle by 2 stitches. It took me about 7 tries to get the right width-to-ruffle proportion. I should have taken pictures of all the different options, but I was so frustrated that I just kept tearing them out. The pattern suggested just cutting down the width of the scarf without cutting the width of the ruffles, but the middle portion of the scarf really got lost when I tried that. I ended up with 22 total stitches and ruffles of 4 stitches each, with short rows of 3 and 2 stitches. (The pattern called for 30 total stitches and ruffles of 6 stitches each, with short rows of 5 and 3 stitches.) This all probably doesn't make any sense, but it will if any of you ever decide to knit this scarf.

I used a blend of wool and hemp that was hand dyed and spun by my (now ex-)local yarn store. I held it doubled throughout and knit on 10 1/2s. It had been a long time since I'd knit on needles so large, and I'd forgotten how fun it was. This yarn was also really lovely to knit with, and it may be my only regret about swearing off my local yarn store.


2 comments:

Helen said...

Your ruffled scarf looks lovely. There's a Knitalong for Knitting New Scarves at http://knittingnewscarves.blogspot.com/
Please come along and join us :)

CH said...

Nice scarf, HEB!
I'm glad to see that the knitting book that arrived when I was in NH has been put to good use.
Why did you swear off of your local yarn store?