What would we do without Cab TV? This segment was followed by a "Loopt" informaton.
The name of this pattern is actually My So Called Scarf, which I have never really gotten. I tried to connect it back to that old tv show My So Called Life, but it has nothing to do with the scarf pattern name. There is a story behind the pattern that I think is supposed to be the origin of the name, but it still didn't make a lot of sense to me. Regardless, this is another project marked off of my Christmas knitting list. I made this scarf with Manos Del Uruguay in colorway #118.
Manos is a very popular yarn for this scarf because the varying thick and thin texture of the yarn and the varigated colorways really show off the stitch pattern. Purple is not really my color, but I do really like this colorway. I like the contrast between the so dark that it's almost black dark purple and the light tan. This is knitted on size 11 needles and once you get the hang of the stitch pattern you can pretty much knit on auto pilot, so it really flies off the needles. I also limited myself to two skeins of yarn for this scarf, so it is a much more reasonable length than my last two scarves. I have two skeins of the yarn left that were going to be a hat, but neither of the hat patterns that I was going to make panned out the way I thought they would, so I'm not sure what I'm going to do with that yarn now.
My friend S. who taught me how to knit and who has been coming over on a weekly basis since January to knit and watch British television with me is about to finish up her degree and has taken a job at a university in Indiana, so she'll be moving this week. I decided to knit her a pair of Rose Tyler Wristwarmers in one of the school colors of her new university for a going away gift. Of course the problem with knitting something as a gift for S. is that she reads my blog and looks at my Ravelery account, so I've had to be very careful about keeping any mention of these off of the internet until I gave them to her. I started these back in February, but because I had to be so secretive about them and because I was pretty burnt out on the pattern after finishing the pair that I made for myself , the knitting was pretty slow going and I just finished them up last week.
These were basically done exactly the same as the pair I made for myself. I knitted them on size 4 double points and used two skeins of Debbie Bliss Cahmerino dk in colorway #18004. I love the Debbie Bliss Cahmerino for these wristwarmers, and it has the added benefit of being S.'s favorite yarn. The only thing that I did differently for these was instead of making a rib on the palm side between the thumb and fingers like I did on mine, I continued on in stockinette stitch. I think I like the stockinette stitch better. It looks a little more polished I guess and the gloves have enough structure that it doesn't curl like I feared it might.
Well, look at what a great knitting instructor I am. My brother has gone and knitted a baby hat:
This was knitted for a friend's husband, T., who asked if I would knit him a scarf. After several emails back and forth, we decided on an A Scarf Askew. They picked out the yarn and mailed it to me. It was kind of fun to have someone just send me yarn to knit with.
They chose Cascade Ecological Wool, the yarn recommended by the pattern, in colorway #8063. This was the first time I'd ever knit with this yarn. It was nice. You can definitely tell it's wool, but it's not as scratchy as I thought it was going to be. The really nice thing about it is that there is tons of yardage in a skein of this stuff. I think it's something like 478 yards. The scarf was knit on size 8 needles as called for in the pattern. I really like this pattern. I think it's very elegant in its simplicity. I also think that it could almost be reversible because I like the back of the pattern almost as much as I like the front of it.
The only issue with it is that because it's bascially stockinette stitch with some strategically placed purls, it curls like mad. Here is a pre-blocking picture of the scarf where you can see how badly it's curled, and even in the post blocking picture above, you can see that the edges still want to curl over a little bit.
The only pattern modification that I made was to skip the tassles. I got the scarf to the specified pattern length and decided that it would not be long enough to wear in the way that T. wants to wear it. Plus, I think the garter stitch edge that the tassles would have been attached to looks nice just as it is.
I ended up just knitting the entire skein for this scarf which made it very long. The scarf was much longer after blocking than I had anticipated. In fact, I had to block it in my upstairs hallway because that was the only place that I could find enough floor space to lay it out flat.
As you can see, the scarf would be too long for me, but T. is several inches taller than me, so hopefully it won't be too long for him. And yes, I realize this whole getting the scarf too long thing has become a trend for me.
