January 6, 2006
The Rest of the Knitted Gifts
I didn't knit any gifts for family this year, so I wasn't too worried about the big holiday project rush. I thought I'd whip up some scarves for the kids' teachers and that would be it. Well, what started out as three scarves turned into five scarves, and one day to finish a scarf turned into several, so I was pretty busy the week before Christmas. I managed to finish all but one before Christmas, and by the New Year everyone had received their gift. Without further ado, here are the projects of my Christmas vacation.
1. Branching Out
I used one skein of Kid Silk Haze (color 592: Heavenly) and size 8 needles. I ended up with 40 pattern repeats. (I was planning on knitting the whole skein, but when I reached 40 and still had enough to keep going, I decided it was time to stop.) I loved blocking this piece at the end and seeing something beautiful come from a crumpled mess. The length and everything on this scarf was perfect, so if it hadn't been an overdue Christams gift, I might have kept it for myself.
2. Mistake Rib
This one started out as My So Called Scarf. I got my 2 skeins of Manos (color 111) and started going, but it just wasn't happening. It might have worked if I'd gone up a needle size, but I didn't have time to experiment. I just ended up using a mistake rib pattern which knit up faster anyway. I used size 10 needles for this one.
3. Star Cluster
This scarf used one skein of S. Charles Ritratto (color 73) and size 10 needles. I just used the Star Cluster pattern from one of the Barbara Walker books.
4. Another Ruffled Scarf
It turns out their was a mistake on the yarn label when I made the first of these scarves. While the label says to chain 200 stitches, the correct online version of the pattern only calls for 100 stitches. The first one was starting to eat up a lot of yarn by the end, so I just stopped after 4 rows and used 5 balls of yarn. This version is from the online pattern and although I had to buy four balls to finish it, it came much closer to the three called for in the pattern. I can't say enough how soft the Caron Bliss is. It made the kidsilk haze feel scratchy to work with.