Dad's Scarf -- Take 2

After abandoning the Henry scarf I was making for my father, I knit one up in a simple seed stitch. I'm not sure he liked it, though, from his reaction on the phone. And even though he raved over the gloves I made last year, he didn't wear them at Thanksgiving. Hm.

modeling credit: the vase Rob's Aunt Vonnie gave me for Christmas last year.

Comic-Con Knitting Disaster!

Rob and I spent the last 5 days at Comic-con in San Diego. I brought my knitting for when the booth was slow and because I make toys of his characters to sell. After the show closed yesterday, Rob took a load of things to the car, but forgot his keys. He left my knitting bag by the car (yes, NOT smart) and when he came back, my bag was STOLEN. It had my needle roll in it with ALL of my needles, a scarf I made for my sister in law, at least a dozen balls of yarn and a pair of scissors I’ve had since kindergarten – 3 decades ago. I should probably add that I made the knitting roll myself and the scarf was a new design I had hoped to sell the pattern for.

We drove around the parking lot for a while, hoping whoever took it ditched it when they realized there were no comics in it. No such luck.

And so far, no one has turned it in to the parking garage, the convention center or the hotel connected with the convention center, but I'm still keeping my fingers crossed.

Frogged!

This is what Dad's scarf looks like now. I've knit entire sweaters in less time than it took to get halfway through this project. Sigh. Defeated by the herringbone stitch.

Scarf Season Part 2

Still trudging along on Dad's scarf. I've been working on this for almost two months and I am BARELY halfway done. Yikes! I wanted to make a spring sweater using these needles, but I don't think that will be happening. Good thing Christmas is still 9 months away!

Now that I'm on Ravelry, I've been reading about other people's experiences with this pattern. A lot of them found it tedious as well. Part of me wishes I knew that before I began, but I'm not sure reading about the frustrations of others would have deterred me from taking a stab at this -- my ego usually thinks I am not susceptible to the same issues as mere mortals!

What's worse, is I'm not even sure if this going to look good when it's done. I used a different yarn and the herringbone pattern is barely visible in it. Also, one row of stitches looks completely funky and I have NO idea why. When I look at them closely, they appear to all be slipped and knitted correctly, but for some reason that particular row looks like a run in a pair of panty hose. Ugh! Other ravelers say blocking does wonders for this pattern. I've always skipped blocking, but I'll give it a try this time. After all the hours I've invested in this, I've got to somehow find a way to make it look presentable!

The slow progress of this project has totally gotten me down. To get a sense of accomplishment, I decided set it aside for a while and start a scarf for my Dad's wife, Barb,. It's knitted with Misti Alpaca, on 9's instead of 10's to create a denser, warmer scarf. Rob says it looks like television static. After I got done being mad at him for that, I decided he was right. Hopefully, Barb will like it. I asked my Dad for her favorite colors and he thought she'd like a mix of grays. Then again, I asked my Dad for color advice. That may have been mistake number one!

Scarf Season

I've been swamped with work (before Valentine's Day is a VERY busy time for the home pleasure party business) but I've still managed to get a few stitches in.

On January 31, my older sister had a big birthday, the kind that ends in a zero. She always makes presents for people -- scrapbooks or something she has crocheted -- so I decided such a momentous birthday merited a handmade present from me. I knitted her a scarf, but sadly I can't post any pictures because I finished it 30 seconds before the UPS guy arrived at my office. Does this sound familiar? I can say she loved it and she told me it is the first handmade present she has ever gotten. This depressed me a bit, so I am thinking about what I can make her for Christmas.

Speaking of Christmas, I resolved to knit Christmas presents early this year. Staying up till 4AM on Christmas Eve to finish a gift will, hopefully, be a once in a lifetime experience. I started a scarf for my Dad to match his gloves. That pattern is here and it is kicking my butt. I decided to do it in Cascade 220, which is what I used for the gloves, and even though I knit a fairly large test swatch, I still goofed it up and had to rip it out twice. That may have had more to do with how exhausted I've been and not a reflection of the pattern's difficulty. I'm now about 12 rows in and seem to be on track. I'll post a picture as soon as I have completed enough for it to actually look like something.

In other scarf news, I'm planning to knit a scarf for my best friend, Patty, as a thank you for letting Rob and I stay with her. Rob has a table at Wonder-Con in San Francisco and Patty always lets us use her as a hotel when we are in town for conventions. Wonder-Con is in two weeks and I haven't been able to get to the yarn store to pick out some awesome yarn. It's a good thing San Francisco is a 5 hour drive from LA. Sigh. This will probably be one more masterpiece that doesn't get immortalized with a photo on this blog. : )

Before and After

My friend Geraldine started a scarf and then abandoned it because she had run out of yarn before the scarf reached the desired length. When she got tired of this unfinished piece taking up space, she handed it off to me to see if I could do anything with it.

The scarf was curling in on itself because she had worked it in stockinette stitch with no edge stitches. The yarn was very bulky and she had cast on 23 stitches, resulting in a VERY wide scarf. After looking at it, I realized the only option was to frog it and start from scratch.

Geraldine is a fashion designer, so I wanted to make her a scarf with a little pizzazz. I toyed with a few ideas, including mixing the bulky yarn with a lighter weight one to create contrasting textures.

Ultimately, I decided just to use the existing yarn. I cast on 120 stiches and knit the scarf lengthwise, in the round, in seed stitch. After reaching the desired width, I cast off all but 10 stitches and unwound those 10 columns. The resulting yarn was cut at the center point, creating the fringe.

Even though I cast on and off loosely, the edges of the scarf are a tad stiffer than I would have liked, but they give the scarf a bit of structure and Geraldine seemed to like it!