Scarf – Hopefully Creative

Believe: An MKAL the Lasso Way

Another mystery knit, now in shades of blue.

I must preface this by saying that I haven’t watched a full episode of Ted Lasso, so most of the jokes in the pattern went entirely over my head. Still, the experience of participating in Believe: An MKAL the Lasso Way by Mary Annarella was a lot of fun.

Three skeins of yarn in shades of blue and one in yellow — Clue 1

It required 4 skeins of yarn, one needed to be high contrast with all the others but those three didn’t need high contrast between them. I settled on dyeing them in three shades of blue and one bright yellow. The blues are a combination of Aqua Tropic as a base with either Teal or Turquoise added. For the yellow, I had to dye a second skein because the first one ended up too orange.

Unfortunately, the main knitting method for this scarf was extremely similar to the other Mystery Knit Along that I was participating in at practically the same time: Funfetti MKAL. However, this one had opposite increases and decreases from Funfetti so I had to pay close attention to which one I was working on. What was fun was that these sections were much more manageable and different. There are some repeat stitch patterns but all in all that went very well.

Two parts of a scarf in three shades of blue and one of yellow. — Clue 5

Since there are many colours here too, there were a lot of ends to weave in. The forums quickly shared a good method for weaving as you go. So that made it all a lot less annoying. Once there were two equal parts of the scarf, we knit points. Those two sections were then three needle bind-offed together to get a nice diagonal stripe across.

Backside of a scarf in three shades of blue and one of yellow. — Backside

Scarf in three shades of blue and one of yellow being blocked — Backside

I like this scarf. The colours are nice and it’s very long so I can wrap it und my neck twice and still have length leftover. This was very unexpected as I was not on gauge and expected the thing to turn out much smaller. The yarn is decent enough, but it isn’t as warm and cosy as the alpaca sock yarn that I tend to want to use. It has already seen the outside world and I expect that it will do that more often when the weather calls for it.

Funfetti Mystery Knit

Knitting a mystery rainbow scarf.

January 29 was the start of my next Mystery Knit Along (MKAL), this one was
Funfetti MKAL by : : : Katie Degroff Knits : : :. It called for 200 grams ish of fingering weight yarn, and then 200 grams ish of two or six or twelve contrast colours. I opted to split two skeins of Alpaca 4 ply into three, so I wound up with six colours. Since I just purchased new yarn dye in almost a rainbow, I figured that would be a great way to test those too.

2 large purple skeins and 6 mini skeins in a rainbow. — Yarns

2 large purple balls of yarn and 6 mini balls in a rainbow. — Yarns

The main colour was then a combination of violet and periwinkle. The contrasts were A: Neon Red, B: Neon Orange, C: Neon Yellow, D: Blacklight Blue, E: Aqua Tropic and F: Crocodile Green. Most of the colours work well together although the Crocodile Green does feel like the odd one out. Out of my new dyes, Croc Green, Aqua and Neon Yellow are my favourites.

When it came to knitting, it was a lot per installment. The construction was interesting. We started with a diamond shape with rounds in the different colours. Then we put that one aside and started working on a section where you increase in the middle but eventually start decreasing on the ends, so you end up with a ‘house’ shape. We did that for a few of the clues before going back to clue one and starting to add to that one too.

The final clue was to fill in two rectangles to connect the two sections we had been working on. This was quite satisfying because it was the last clue and a much smaller number of stitches. I was debating whether to do the colour changes at the end because it would leave so many ends, and while I decided to go for it, I opted out of the last colour and only did five colours. I think this worked fine.

The end result is a long rectangular scarf, with one of the short ends straight and the other side pointed. Since there are so many colour changes, weaving in the ends was a project in and of itself. It really is quite big. I don’t think I should opt for 400 gram scarves in the future. This one will end up being gifted away since I’m not enjoying the purple colour for anything I would wear.

Still, the MKAL was well organized. The forums were fun and the designer was very helpful. I just chose colours that I didn’t like even though the yarn I used was great.

Tea Cup Scarf

Loopy scarf that pretends to be a teacup.

One of my friends had a birthday in August and I decided to use this as an opportunity for gift giving and reducing my yarn stash. I still had more of that pink stuff laying around that would suit someone who likes pink a lot better. Inspiration was easily found since Pinterest had thrown up a ‘tea cup scarf‘ at some point, and I knew she liked tea.

Rolled up pink and brown scarf that vaguely resembles a teacup

Skein of brown variegated yarn with a label reading Arequipa Singles and other details.

So I set out to dye some Arequipa singles yarn in ‘tea brown’ (some combination of ‘brown’ and ‘chestnut’), and after it dried, just started knitting on the knitting machine. I cast on 60 stitches on gauge 5 and just zoomed my way through almost the entire ball. I held back a few meters of brown for finishing, then attached the pink yarn and knit until that also ran out. With the last sections, I knit a ‘handle’ for the cup. Then everything got blocked on the hoard room floor, taking up the entire length. This seemed a little.. much.

Pink and brown knitted scarf with a loop on a mannequin

Pink and brown knitted scarf with a loop and a knit tea-bag on a mannequin

To remedy that problem, I made the scarf double layered by bringing the brown end up to the start of the brown and knitting down the sides and doing the same thing with the pink. I also added the handle when I was sewing down the pink sides. To complete the teacup look, I knit a small pouch (to hold some stitch markers) and attached a little tea-bag-label with an embroidered cup. I think it turned out pretty cool and it was a fun way to deal with some more of the pink, while making sure it went to a better home than mine!

Experimental Pinks

Experimenting with colours and knitting machine settings.

At some point, I did some experimenting with dyeing yarn with some red sprinkles. I wasn’t a fan of the end result because it was very pink, and pink is the nemesis colour. So I decided to still use it but gift the resulting thing to a friend and get it out of my house. It was also a great opportunity to try out different things with my knitting machine.

I cast on almost the full bed of my knitting machine, since there are some broken bits not all needles can be used. Then started knitting as normal, decreasing one stitch on one side every four rows. The first thing I tried was gauge stripes (one of the examples in my instruction manual), by knitting rows with the largest gauge (10) and decreasing one step in the gauge every four rows until gauge two. Next, I changed the gauge every three rows, when that was finished every two rows and I even ended up doing 1 row per gauge change. It’s a fun progression to see.

Some simple flat rows came after before continuing with a different example in the instruction manual where two rows are knitted on a small gauge that makes tight stitches and then two rows knitting on a high gauge with looser stitches. The book also had a pattern with putting stitches on hold that looked quite interesting, like a hole with two lines of yarn through it. Because this was quite a lot of work per stitch, I only did a few rows of this.

I tried a section where I decreased every fourth stitch and then put those needles that no longer have a stitch out of work. When knitting, this creates a slightly larger hole between the stitches still in work and the non-knit needle. I like this one. To go back to normal, you add a stitch back to the needles that were out of work and put them back in work. The last one was a cable inspired pattern, I think. It didn’t work as nicely on the knit side of the scarf, so I’m not sure I’ll use it again.

Once all of the knitting on the main piece was concluded, before Christmas, the scarf disappeared into a bag to be forgotten. Until the start of April, when I decided that it was probably time to finish the thing. I wanted to add an anti-roll edge so I did the same thing as in my previous pirate’s cove scarf. It took most of the day, but I did manage to finish it. It’s been wet blocked to hopefully keep the shape.

It has since found its new owner and although I doubt it’ll be worn soon (summer and all that), I hope that it’ll be a useful addition to my friends wardrobe!

Family Projects

Dyeing and crafting with family.

Relatively recently, in May, my brother Peter and his partner Cathelijne came to visit me. We’d planned to do some yarn dyeing just for them to see what it was about. We chose two skeins for each after deciding what I would make from the finished yarn and set to work.

My brother wanted to use the Natural Boo DK yarn, a merino and bamboo mix for a hat/scarf. His plan was to do blue with yellow resists. Surprisingly similar to my starry night sweater – I did not influence this! His yarns were left dry and he added tie wrap resists. A fair few, just to see what would happen. We dunked his yarn into a mixture of blue and navy dyes and pulled it out once that was all set. When we removed the resists, it turned out that if you put two relatively close together, you just get a larger resist. He then added yellow over the top with a syringe. It turned out pretty cool!

Cathelijne wanted to have a triangular scarf like my fringed one. I told her that would be cool, but I wasn’t going to knot all those fringes again, we’d figure out something else. So she settled on Quarter round yarn (fingering weight 100% merino) and would be doing one part grey with yellow and blue speckles in the white parts. This yarn was pre-soaked and once wet enough, we added a little bit of grey to the pot and created a nice construction to keep enough of the yarn white. Once the grey had set, we pulled it out, and she hand-speckled citric acid mixed with dye over the top of it. Most of the speckles are blue and yellow, but sometimes two landed close together and there’s a tiny green area.

All projects were knit on the knitting machine. For Peter’s snood, I cast on a fair amount of stitches on every alternate needle. I made a two eyelets a few rows in and then hung the hem. I continued until almost all the yarn was finished. The bottom hem was then sewn so it looked like the hung hem at the top. I also wanted to make a cord, and I figured, there must be a way that this machine can do i-cord. So I fumbled with the settings and zipped my way through probably several hundred rows to make a nice i-cord to thread through the upper hem.

The bamboo earflap hat was based on a pattern from Clearwater Knits, Earflap Hat by Irene Woods. Since I used a different gauge and a different head size, I recalculated everything. It was started on the knitting machine with e-wrap cast on on 134 stitches, then 18 rows of plain knit, then the flaps were created over 32 stitches from stitch 13 inwards. It was basically like a big sock heel. Then 18 more rows and the hem was hung. Then I knit until I almost ran out of yarn, pulled it off the machine and knit up the top by decreasing in 12 sections. I left two stitches out for seaming up the back. Lastly, I put some fleece into the flaps for added warmth and added braids to the bottom of the flaps.

For the triangular scarf, I used exactly the same pattern as for the fringed scarf, but I left off the fringe. When I got to place where you need to start decreasing again, I did a row of decorative eyelets to mimic the ones that would be along the spine too. I then finished the scarf the same way as my fringed one and put it out to block. Once it was fully blocked, there was still some yarn leftover to make some cute little tassels. There’s one on each long end and two on the point.

All in all, I think this was fun to do with family!

Orange Zig Zag

Slowly working on an orange travel project.

I always have a portable project to bring with me on my travels. From October 22, 2022 until July 4, 2023 it was this orange one-skein scarf. I used Anivia by Claire Slade, as my pattern. In order to qualify as a nice travel project, I want a simple repeat that I don’t have to think about too long. The zig zags also really tickle my fancy because I think they are so nicely simplistic but not too monotone to knit.

The yarn, Alpaca 4ply sock from Chester Wool, was dyed on September 4, 2022 with a combination of mostly orange with a little brown. I’m in love with the colour of it. A somewhat mottled brownish-orange with tiny darker orange and brown speckles. It doesn’t photograph very clearly but I think the colour is most true in the picture with the ball and the triangle section below.

The knitting went quite smoothly. The pattern is quite memorable, when the zig goes left, it’s yarn over, ssk, k2 and repeat. For the right zag, it’s k2tog, yarn over, k2 and repeat. To get the zig zag to work, you do a knit stitch more or less at the start of the row. Furthermore, one stitch is increased at the end, and it’s k3, purl to almost end, k3 on every wrong side row. Now, I don’t really like ssk normally, because it gets you out of your rhythm with having to move stitches from one needle to the other. So I did some googling and found a new one step ssk online. I’ve used it from about halfway through and it’s so much faster than a regular ssk.

I’ve not worn this new additional all that often because it’s still been summer-ish since July (wet, but not too cold). However, I hope it’ll be nice!

Green & Blue

Almost stripy scarf in blues, with little eyelets along the way.

Another knitting machine experiment. I wanted to see if I could make a triangular scarf that wouldn’t grow as fast as most of the ones I’ve tried before. As such, there wasn’t a published pattern involved with this, just one I made up as I went along. The yarn was Alpaca 4ply sock, dyed with one side dark blue and the rest turquoise on 28 March. The scarf itself was started on May 2nd.

The experiment was quite nice, and you can really see the effect blocking has on pointy things. The scarf has a much better point after blocking even though the edges continue to curl a little. I’m not sure I mind though. I really like the striped effect that this dye job created.

This is the pattern:

CoR e-wrap cast on 6 stitches from 70L to 65L.
Knit 3 rows (CoL).
*Transfer the second and third stitch on the left, one needle to the left. Transfer the last two stitches one needle to the right (this creates two eyelets and one increase). Knit 4 rows.*
Repeat ** until there would be 11 stitches between the eyelets on the increase row. In that row transfer the middle stitch one needle to the left to create a decorative eyelet. Knit 4 rows. (Decorative Eyelet Section (DES))
Repeat ** 3x (15 rows from last middle eyelet); and repeat DES (the decorative eyelet will be two needles to the right.) Once there are enough stitches between the side eyelets, make decorative eyelets by transferring the 10th stitch from the center eyelet to the needle on the left.
Repeat until half of the yarn is knit.
Create the second half by e-warp casting on 6 stitches on the right and reversing all shaping.
Use a three needle bind of or some other method of attaching the two sides together.

Fringe!

Things I’ve learnt in this project: fringe knotting is not my thing.

According to Ravelry, I started this scarf on February 25 and finished blocking it on February 28. I may have been slightly neglecting writing about it for no good reason. This was a knitting machine project, hence the quick turnaround. I’d dyed two skeins of quarter round fingering weight yarn with browns, reds and oranges on February 9. Then followed the instructions in the Shawl for all reasons by Carole Thimidis pattern. I decided to do the fringe because I wanted to see how something like that would work.

Well, the knitting of this thing took a few hours. Unraveling and then knotting all the fringe took longer than actually knitting it. You basically knit three stitches, then skip a bunch of needles and then increase stitches to make a a quarter of the body of the scarf. Then those stitches are decreased again (while continuing with the fringe stitches). Half of the scarf is now done, so the stitches are increased again, which leaves little holes along the spine. Those stitches are decreased to finish the scarf. Wrapping my head around how this worked took longer than actually making the scarf. I’ve now figured out the logic but it took me so long. When the scarf is done, you start unraveling those fringe stitches row by row. Once you have one loop loose, you make a knot near the scarf body to prevent further raveling.

Once I had all the fringe knotted, the scarf was wetted and blocked to a nice right sided triangle. It came of the machine in a very different shape. It always amazes me how well blocking works, now that I’ve figured out that’s a thing. The most interesting thing about this scarf is that the colours look very different from different sides. You’ll see that in the blocking image too. While there is about 1.5 skein of yarn in there, and there are some minor colour differences between those yarns, it’s not like one is significantly lighter. It’s just the angle that changes the way it looks. Since it’s been finished, I have worn this thing a fair amount. It’s pretty big even if it’s not very warm but still cosy!

Rainbow Bright Side

Nice pops of colour and texture on otherwise plain grey.

I saw the The Bright Side scarf by Lori B at some point last year when I was looking for scarf patterns on Ravelry. I was immediately intrigued. It looked like such a fun idea to have different coloured bits of texture in a scarf. This was one of the projects that I really wanted to make and finish. So on November 1st, 2022, I died some Chester Wool Company Alpaca 4ply Sock yarn in a nice light grey while leaving some yarn out of the dye pot. A short rainbow gradient was then applied to the undyed section and further steamed to set. It hang out in my house for about two and half more months before I finally picked it up and started my Rainbow Bright Side.

This was my travel project from January 14 until February 19. It was in a plastic bag in my rucksack and traveled with me on daytrips and to the office. I would sometimes do some knitting on it at home too. The pattern is very simple, there are some edge stitches on both sides, but in the middle just knit (and purl on the reverse), if you come across some rainbow stitches, purl them on the knit side and knit them on the purl side. You’ll end up with a giant crescent shape at the end. As the rainbow was dyed on the skein on one side, there’s approximately the same amount of stitches between each section of rainbow. As the width of the scarf changes all the time, this means that some interesting pooling can occur if the circumstances are just right. It’s very fascinating to see how these develop while knitting.

As you end on the widest part of the crescent, I had a hard time estimating how much yarn I still needed to finish. In the end, I won yarn chicken by about 4 cm and felt very lucky about that. I really didn’t want to take that many stitches out again. After winning chicken, the scarf was wetted and the blocked. I tried to pull it into an aesthetically pleasing shape on my pool mats. I think it worked. The point of the triangle is not in the middle of the scarf, which means I can wrap the short side around my neck once, but the long side twice. It also goes with a lot of different things because the colours are both neutral and bright – at least in my opinion. It’s already seen some wear, and I’m sure it’ll come out more often!

Yellow – Turquoise – Orange

Made some baby gifts from self-dyed yarn and other happy fabric.

Baby gift time again! First up, dyeing. On the last day of 2022, the second dye project was a single skein of Chester Wool DK 115 (Worsted) 50s. It is 100% merino and has 50 grams in a skein for around 100 meters of yarn. Since I still had soft yellow dye stock left from the other dyeing I did that day, I put 20 ml of the stock in my pot. Then I added several resists around the skein and dropped the thing into the pot. When it had simmered for long enough, I took it out and dyed the resists turquoise. I couldn’t resist adding some speckles and chose orange. All in all this meant that the skein turned out extremely bright and cheerful. If you ask me, perfect for a baby.

Since there was going to be a new baby, I set out to make some baby things and settled on these two patterns: Easy Peasy Baby Ball by A la Sascha and Tiny Tot by Kristen Rettig. One is a rectangle hat with tassels or pompoms and the other is a ball. I used up the entire skein in the making of these projects, so no leftovers!

I’ve also had a bit of flannel in the stash with a similar colour scheme. There’s also some additional red and green, but I wouldn’t let that stop me. The flannel was bought to make some poppies, so I set out to do exactly that. I tried to make these somewhat symmetrical with the plaid, so the scale was based on that. There’s some difference between these two poppies, one has a green stripe near the head, the other green. One has larger hands, the other smaller, but they are still very similar.

Both knitting patterns were quick, easy to knit and went smoothly. Of course the hat is way too big for the recipient, but I guess my track record stays intact on that score. The last item for the little baby was a spit scarf. Now with skateboarders, rope jumpers and a terry cloth back. It feels very soft even if the snap is on the wrong edge.

I hope the little one will have a marvelous and colourful life!

Tag: Scarf