Throwback Thursday: The Slippery Scarf

One of my best friends, Emily, is also a knitter although at first she was more of a crocheter. And she was sensitive to (if not allergic to) wool. I decided to knit her a scarf, which meant I couldn't use wool, but I also didn't want to use acrylic. So I got some Knit Picks Shine Worsted, which is a blend of cotton and "Modal® natural beech wood fiber (rayon)." Shine is definitely an apt name for the yarn. Not only did it have a sheen to it, it also was quite slippery. That meant that it felt nice and it was actually fairly nice to work with overall. But then it came time to weave in the ends.

And that's when the scarf changed from a pleasant project to a nightmare. Even though I wove in the ends like I always do, which seems fairly secure, this time the ends did not feel secure. I just knew that as soon as I clipped the leftover tail the woven in end would just pop right out and I had horrible images running through my head of the scarf just unraveling as my friend wore it. I was a bit desperate.

And in my desperation I did something that seems rather shocking--I used glue on my knitting. Yup. I took some fabric glue and put a little dot at the end of the yarn where I clipped it. I thought that it would help keep the end in place and the scarf wouldn't unravel. And it's true. It did do that. But there was one thing I didn't take into account--the glue dried and created a hard little lump. Oops. Well, at least it didn't unravel!!

Before weaving in the ends--a traitorous end can be seen in the upper right corner

(The pattern was the Rainy Day Scarf by Beth Collins, which produced a nice undulating effect. Also, it's amazing how pregnancy can change a woman's body--after having her daughter, Emily tried wool again and the sensitivity/allergy seems to have gone away. She's now a very happy wool knitter.)

Throwback Thursday: The Stocking That Wasn't

Socks. I've knit quite a few socks now, but one of my first experiences was doing a stocking for Christmas. I figured that doing what basically amounted to a large sock would be helpful in learning about sock construction. I was right in that sense. I did learn a lot with this project. But it did not turn into a useable stocking!

 

It does almost look a bit like the Grinch's stocking. So what went wrong?

After I turned the heel, I think I got mixed up over which way around I should go. I even think I may have somehow flipped the knitting inside out. I was working with DPNs which I wasn't very experienced with quite yet. After a few rounds, I noticed that something looked wrong. But instead of ripping back (because I didn't feel experienced enough to rip back to a certain place so felt that I would have had to rip back all the way to the beginning and didn't want to do that), I just figured out where I was supposed to be and kept going.

Then came time for the toe. Surely the pattern used a Kitchener graft, right? But apparently I must have either not done that--just decreasing until I had a couple of stitches or decreasing too much before the graft. I don't still have the stocking so I can't go check what actually happened.

The good news is that I tried the stocking again and the next time, I got a much more presentable and useable sock. Unfortunately, I didn't take a very good picture of it and I gave that one to a friend so can't take a better one. But even with the bad picture, surely the difference between the two is apparent.

Throwback Thursday: Green Cabled Hat

I had a plan back in October 2007. I'd been doing cables and enjoying them. I'd been using Malabrigo Worsted and really enjoying it. So I needed a hat with cables out of Malabrigo. I picked a pattern that looked pretty and pretty easy: Cabled Force by Kimberly Lewis. My yarn was a pretty green color (Verde Adriana). I had circular needles. I was ready to go.

I don't really remember much about the actual knitting of this hat. I don't remember if I thought while I was working on it that it seemed to be small. But I sure did a lot of thinking that when I finished the hat. Intended for myself, this hat was instead a child-sized hat.


Yup, I was a victim of not checking my gauge. This was still early on in my knitting life and although I had heard about gauge and knew that it was something I should pay attention to, I didn't listen to that voice inside my head telling me to "save time by stopping to check gauge."

This was the project that made me realize that I am a tight knitter. After a bit more experience, whenever I didn't feel like checking gauge, I just automatically went up a needle size from what the pattern listed (because even when I checked gauge, that was what usually happened). After knitting more hats that actually fit me, I know that a certain number of stitches in worsted weight yarn on size US8 needles is just right (I used 7s on this too small hat; I think at that point, going up to 9s would have been best).

Now that I use Dyakcraft Darn Pretty needles for almost everything, I have discovered that the material the needle is made out of really can affect gauge as now I sometimes do get the gauge listed in the pattern with the listed needle size. But I still knit my worsted weight hats of size 8. Using anything smaller always brings this project to mind, and I shy away from having this happen again.

What happened to the hat? I gave it to my nephew who was a toddler at the time. And truth be told, it was almost too small even then! But I'll always have the memory of the hat to remind me of how important it is to check gauge. And I do listen. Sometimes.

Throwback Thursday: Irish Hiking Scarf

Now that I've been knitting for 10 years, I have a number of knitting projects under my belt, so I'm going to talk about some of those past projects on Thursdays. Today's post is about a project that was a first for me in many ways and is very special as a result.

When I first started knitting, I thought that places like Hobby Lobby were where you went to get yarn. I didn't know about local yarn stores (and there was an amazing one in the town I lived in at the time that I didn't discover for a little while) or about some of the great online shops. So that's where I went to get my yarn, but I wasn't particularly happy with the acrylic yarn. At that time (pre-Ravelry for me--if I remember right I was on the waiting list to join the Ravelry beta for something like seven or eight months, ultimately joining on September 10, 2007, as Raveler #10163), I did find the knittinghelp.com forums and I started reading about yarn that other people were using for projects.

There was this yarn that everyone was going crazy for. They even had a bit of a nickname for it--Mmmmmalabrigo (the number of m's at the beginning being variable based upon how you were feeling about the yarn at the time). This was Malabrigo Worsted (now Merino Worsted) and knitters were raving about how soft and wonderful it was. I had to try some. But I didn't know where to get it. So I turned to the online market I did know--eBay. I found a seller on eBay who had quite a bit of Malabrigo for sale. After carefully looking through all the colors, I picked a pink one (Pink Frost) and ordered two skeins.

I'm not sure where I found the pattern for the Irish Hiking Scarf. Perhaps that also came through the knittinghelp.com forum, but I remember that I was loving the projects with cables that I had seen, but I had never tried cables before. They seemed like they might be really difficult, but I wanted to make projects that looked like some of the pictures that I saw so I was determined to figure it out. And this pattern looked like it might be somewhat on the easier side and would also give me a lot of practice with cables. And I was right. And you know what? Once I started doing the cables I realized that cables are one of those deceptive things in knitting. They look a lot harder than they actually are. And my love of cables has continued.

So I was cruising along on my cable scarf with this luscious yarn that was everything everyone had said it would be. It did take me a while--according to my Ravelry page, I worked on it from August to November 2006 (but since the project itself was pre-Ravelry, I'm not sure how accurate those dates are). And I was having fun with the cables. I do have one mistake in the scarf--a place where I knit two extra rows before starting the next cable, but it's not a super big mistake and overall the scarf turned out really great. This was the first project I was truly proud of.

So this project has a special place in my heart. It was my first non-acrylic yarn. It was my first cable project. It was my first time challenging myself. And when I joined Ravelry, a picture of the beginning of this scarf was my first Ravetar (and the one I used for a very long time--I actually use it here on Blogger still).

I don't wear this scarf very much these days. Not for any particular reason about the scarf but because I prefer cowls to scarves right now. I really should get it out and wear it again. Because that Mmmmmalabrigo is so super soft and squishy. And to this day, it's still one of my favorite yarns to work with.