Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Scarf Stuff

Yes, fiber related activities do still occur around here.
Actually, my chatter over our trip should drop off now that Hubby is back in school. As he will no longer be able to devote every waking moment to planning, he won't flood me with exciting information when I get home from work.
Cashmere sock scarf I thought I would have a new picture of the blue Eyelet and Feather scarf to show you so you would have a fighting chance to understand what I'm going to be babbling about.
But when I went to download it yesterday, there was no picture on the camera, and I remembered the batteries died when I was trying to take it.
So stick with me.
You'll remember I was working on US6 needles, which is what my pattern calls for, and Cynthia suggested I try US7.
I went to the other end of the ball, knit a little stockinnette stitch swatch, and then segued into two pattern repeats.
It looked quite nice.
On the theory that if big was good, bigger might be better, I repeated the process with a US8.
I pulled back the portion I had already worked on the US6 to just two repeats and worked up from there.
It didn't look good; the stitches were too open.
Just to be safe, I took it to the store Saturday for a second opinion.
They agreed the US7 swatch looked good and the principle behind it was sound (larger needle to get more length). Although people did like the US6 swatch too.
So I yanked it all out, used the ball winder to rewind the yarn so it was easier to work with, and I started over.

Frogging Either Way
Now you might think loosing all the work on the US6 progress is a shame, but either way I was thinking I'd yank it.
See, the varigation is very slight on this colorway, but I was still becoming concerned that it was starting to pool, causing the right hand side to be darker than the left hand side.
I had figured my choices were to ignore it and keep knitting; start cutting in the other tail at that point; or start over entirely, cutting in the second tail.
But then when I decided the US7 was better.
This time around I was smart enough to start cutting in the second tail right from the get go.
I'm working two rows with tail one, then two rows with tail two, etc.
This does make a little float up the right hand side of the scarf, but as it's only two rows tall, it's blending in rather well. I'll try to get a picture tonight.
Ok, I think that's it for now, gotta do some work.

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