moonfrog –

A Little Twist on the Stripey Scarf.

I can feel it. Right around the corner. Knitting season, that is. The days are shorter. School is in session. Sip-n-Knit was packed again. It’s the time of year we start turning to indoor pursuits. I’m sure there will be some lovely warm, sunny fall days. (There will be, right? ‘Specially since we have had so much fog around here. Mother Nature owes us some sunshine!) There is no denying that summer is fading fast. So, I return to my neglected blog to share what I’ve been doing in this last month of summer.

Funny as it seems, I’ve been making scarves a lot this summer. I rarely make scarves, although this is not so true nowadays. My LYS has a design contest going, so I’ve been working on a scarf for that. So far I’ve done one whole scarf and two half scarves. Same pattern, over and over. It takes longer to knit something that must be put down to save the brain from becoming bored.  I’ll share more of this project after the contest is complete.

Two colors alternated for weft.

Another scarf served as a warping demo at the Farmer’s Market. It was fun to string out the direct warp in the sunshine with all the shoppers buying veggies and my guild friends spinning and weaving with me. The sun even came out after a while. I used some Indigo Moon merino fingering for the warp and alternated what was left of that skein with some Great Northern Yarn (40% yak 10% mink 35% baby merino 15% soybean) in burgundy and black.

Soft, drapey, wonky scarf. Of course, I placed the wonkiest part center-front for your viewing pleasure!

My goal was to make a drapey, soft scarf and that is indeed what I got. It will feel really lovely around my neck. Unfortunately, I forgot some of my weaving lessons and left out the paper between the layers of the finished cloth. The threads rubbed together and spread apart in wild ways, making my lines wonky. This was repaired to some extent during blocking, but not fully. I bet I’ll never forget that again! The Indigo Moon also pooled more than I expected, especially since I was alternating it with the Great Northern Yarn. A little pooling never hurt anyone, right? I do like the scarf, in spite of its faults, and it will stay with me rather than being given to its intended recipient.

There have been other events over the summer, but the latest was the Humboldt County Fair. Our guild members had the usual fun of the spinning competition, the sheep to shawl (or fleece to fabric), and demos in our guild room. I managed to spin quite a bit in the few days I was there. I added a bobbin to my two teal bobbins, which is destined to be a three-ply, so I’m ready to start plying. I’ll probably spin up the rest of the singles just to be sure I have enough to go with the three-ply. And I started on some very colorful merino, trying to spin it a bit heavier than my recent yarns. The colors are very entertaining.

I’ve also signed up for Dish Rag Tag again. I really love this race, but haven’t been able to fit it into my schedule for a few years. I’ll be knitting up a dish cloth like it’s do-or-die one day in the next few weeks. That will put some intensity in my crafting for sure.

Are you feeling the urge to knit more, stay inside lately? Or are you squeezing the last bit out of the summer?