Thursday, September 4, 2008

Knit Knit Here, Knit Knit There

Suddenly the knitting mojo and interest is back in a big way! I've got 3 different scarves going at the moment, 2 of them rescued from the aged WIP pile.

The pink is the Any-Gauge Reversible Pinecone Scarf from Gardiner Yarn Works. I'm doing this in KnitPicks' Shine cotton yarn. The yarn is nice and silky to the touch, and isn't splitty, but the pattern is full of K2tog's and I'm finding the cotton is hard on my wrists. I don't want to think about how tough K2tbl would be! The pattern is 20 rows long and has pattern stitches on every row, so I'm working closely from the chart; I don't find that the design is in any way intuitive, but it is very pretty. This will be for our seniors' charity boutique.

The lavender scarf is from Allison Jeppson Hyde's SpinDyeKnit website, a variation of feather & fan called Rabbit Tracks. There are only 2 pattern rows, so this moves along fast. The yarn is Elann's lovely Peruvian Baby Silk in the Lotus Blossom colorway. I'm using my new favorite needles, the Harmony wooden circulars with the nice sharp tips, but this rather slippery yarn would be better with bamboo; my old favorite Crystal Palace just don't have a sharp enough tip. This will be a gift to someone someday. Just fun to knit and a good traveling project.

The russet and brown scarf is part of the Fashionably-Late KAL, which was started by some of my Elann friends. It's last year's so-popular Chevron Scarf from Joelle Hoverson's Last Minute Knitted Gifts. I'm using one skein of Shibui Knits sock yarn, a nearly-solid russet, and one skein of Plymouth's Happy Feet yarn in shades of browns and russets with one of the shades as close to the Shibui yarn as if they'd been dyed together.

And, not last, here's the A4A vest I started the last weekend in August, my LOTR marathon project. I meant to finish it over the long weekend, but I just never got back to it. I spent a lot of the weekend knitting and frogging and knitting and frogging the Chevron scarf, to get the best combination of needle and yarn and to deal with miscounted stitches, false starts on edgings, etc. The yarns are Brown Sheep's Lamb's Pride worsted (teal) and Kona Bay worsted. I picked up both of these very nice wools in super-cheap odd-skein bags at a LYS which closed last year. The pattern is from the Coats & Clark website but modified to be knitted in the round.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love that pinecone scarf! And Baby Silk is my favorite of the yarns I've bought from Elann; if I could buy it by the cone, I'd be happy. Meantime, enjoy that Rabbit Tracks, and thank you!

smariek said...

Your needles are on fire!

K2tbl doesn't bother me, but I hate Purling anything through the back loop. P2tbl or P3tbl, on cotton is a real pain! With stiff cotton, I sometimes stick the needle in as if K2tbl just to loosen the stitches (or make a bigger hole, lol), then stick the needle in the correct way to do the Purl tbl.

As an alternative to P2tbl, have you ever tried doing this: Purl 1 stitch and then return it to the left-hand needle. Then with point of right-hand needle, pass the next stitch (2nd stitch on lh needle) over it and off the needle. Then slip the stitch back to the right-hand needle.

I was going to pick up the Harmony DPN set, but I spent all my "allowance" on today's yarn on Elann. Sigh...

Cindy G said...

That Pinecone scarf is a really cool pattern!

Carol said...

I should probably pick up a wip. nah, lets cast on something new! don't ya love Alison's patterns? Lovely. sigh.