KnitMe

Swathed in cashmere

I finished my Trellis scarf the other day. I am so delighted with it. It's the perfect combination of luxury and utility.

It ended up about 6 feet long and 12 inches across and used almost all of one cone of DK weight cashmere (really more of a sport weight when knitted up) from the eBay seller Colourmart (they also have their own website now, apparently). It took several soaks, in the skein and also at blocking, to get the spinning oil to come out, but it's very soft and beautiful now.

The pattern is easy to knit (even the odd maneuver with knitting 7 together into 5 is not difficult once you find a small enough crochet hook and get the hang of it) and I will absolutely knit it again. I didn't block it hard, because I wanted it to stay cushy and scarf-sized, so the lace is not as open as you might see in other photos of laceweight versions.

When I got to the end of the scarf, and finished the ending border chart of 13 rows, I was astonished to see that the end was not going to have points like the beginning. This totally floored me, so I put it down and googled to see what people had done. Turns out that this was a well-known 'feature' of the pattern that many others had already discussed. There appeared to be three schools of thought on the subject: Knit it as written and live with it having one pointy end and one flat end; knit it as written and block the bejeezus out of it; knit a second end like the beginning and graft it onto live stitches so the scarf will match.

Being me, I decided to try a fourth approach. I ripped back the border rows and improvised a solution as I went along that I believed would introduce points. I don't think I could tell anyone exactly what I did, but I think it worked quite well and if I can do it anybody can do it. I increased in the center of the plain stockinette sections, and decreased on the sides of them, and it magically worked out. You can see in these photos that there is a slight difference because I didn't realize for a few rows that I could put the yarn overs back in and get a better match, so there are a couple of holes missing, but I am really happy with how it came out.

I wore it this morning in the cold and wind and I'm just in love with it. My cushy ribbed merino scarf is just going to have to take a vacation while I bond with this one.

I finished our angora hats last week.

When I got all done, I wished I hadn't put the little blue edge on mine, but it's still a soft cushy warm hat. If that yarn (Elsebeth Lavold Angora) comes back on clearance at WEBS again, I will probably buy a little more.

I finished one of the Monkey socks and started the next one. It's looking very nice in that Tess yarn. Oddly enough, that sock is the only thing I have on the needles right now. I started knitting something with my brown bluefaced leicester that is not yet finished being spun, and after awhile it became clear that while it was making a very nice fabric, I wouldn't have enough yarn to finish the item. So, I frogged, and have to wait for the pattern I think is going to be my perfect fit for the yarn. I guess I will just knit my sock until something else inspires me...

Posted by Prudence at January 29, 2007 08:17 AM