Fancy a Shag?

I cast on for another Shag scarf almost as soon as I'd finished Aria, as I needed some unconscious knitting to do while I was away from home. It's funny, the first time I tried this pattern, I had to concentrate like it was the trickiest bit of lace, but now I can do it while I'm catching trains and listening to the iPod and talking. I had a ball of Noro Silk Garden in earthy naturals, number 47, and I had been pining to do this pattern in a graduated yarn ever since I saw Wendi's . I originally bought the Noro to use with a creamy coloured yarn in another scarf, but it never worked properly. This time it was perfect. I had to buy another ball and I've ended up with a really interesting bit of rusty colour at the centre back, but this scarf looks good wrapped from front to back too, so that's OK.

I bought more Silk Garden today to do another Shag, but I also got some lavender Rowan Scottish Tweed to do Meandering Stripes or Stacked Wedges. My aunt wears those sharp lilac and pinks (sky blue pink) and I think she'll love one of these for Christmas. I don't mind making all these for other people becauses I feel I am working towards deciding which one I want for myself, and I'm quite happy spending some time making Absolutely Sure.

In between, I cast on my friend's Mavis again and I've finished the first ball. It's stretched bit further this time, because I cast on fewer stitches. I'm putting this aside now until after Christmas, not least because this is yarn to work on in daylight. If you knit this in the winter, you miss half the pleasure.

Speaking of which, have you seen these Raven yarns? Although they're from the Socks that Rock people, they're available in other weights, like silk and mohair laceweight, or even a bulky 2-stitches-to-the-inch wool from Uruguay. I've managed to stop myself buying any immediately, because I am simply not going to knit shades of black in a northern winter but come the spring I think I shall be unable to resist. The Knitting Linguist has made the most beautiful stole.

Aria All Done

I finished Aria last night. I made it to the end of the sixth ball of Natural Silk Aran: it's 64 inches long just now but I expect it will stretch. I've hung it up so that it can.

The drapeyness of this yarn is just heavenly: it's soft enough to fold over double so that you get twice the frills on one edge. (My spell-checker didn't like 'drapeyness', but doesn't suggest anything else. It doesn't really like 'spell-checker' either, but I insist on hyphens.) It's worth clicking on the photograph to get the full glory of the yarn, and the frills.

I caught the end of My Cousin Vinnie, when I was finishing off the ends. It's one of my favourites; if I catch a bit of the courtroom scenes, I'm hooked. I always forget that it was directed by Jonathan Lynn, after he'd written Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister, and then I look it up and remember again. It's difficult to come up with quotes from it because most of the funniest bits are exchanges rather than one-liners; the scenes between Joe Pesci and Marisa Tomei are a joy, even although they consist mostly of them bickering. Vinnie on being given breakfast on his first morning in Alabama - 'Sure, I've heard of grits. I just never actually seen a grit before.'

Blugger won't let me load any more photos of Aria tonight: it must be doing something more important. I'm not here tomorrow, but I'll post again properly on the weekend. Meanwhile you can go over to the Knitting New Scarves KAL and see what everybody else has been doing.

Scarves, But No Bears

I'm afraid I haven't fulfilled the earlier promise of the post which asked you to identify a small pink piece of knitting. It was intended to be a teddy bear's ear, but after I'd knitted four of them and began to assemble the pieces, I was eventually filled with a fit of rage and disgust, and I threw all the bits away. Well, perhaps rage and disgust is putting it a bit strongly, but I got fed up with it. I like sewing, but I don't always like sewing knitting, and that particular piece wasn't ingenious enough to hold my attention. And I had sewn the teddy bear's legs together by mistake.

So the pockets on the little scarf will remain empty, unless I find another teddy / rabbit / pig to take the place of the discarded one. The little scarf is cute, though.

It's from Knitting for Children and their Teddies, and is actually meant to be scarf for a bear, but I sized it up a little bit. Here you can see it on Sylvester, who is being very patient given that I haven't knitted him a scarf for himself yet. Rowan Kid Classic in Feather and um, something else.

After all this fiddle faddle, it was a great relief to return to Aria. I completed another ball of Natural Silk Aran and today I would have finished another, except that I made a mistake while I was watching Startup.com, which was on BBC4. I don't think the film was that gripping, I just kept thinking it was going to be gripping so I knitted a purl row by mistake. Since it would have been at the back of the neck, I pondered leaving it but for once my better self won out and I ripped it back.
I'm nearly half way through the yarn, and I think I'll use it all.

The ingenious Vivienne answered my question about putting functioning buttons in the sidebar, so you can now click on the Knitting New Scarves Knitalong button and be whisked magically thereto. Oh, and there's a new jigsaw too.

P.S. The reason there were four teddy bear ears is because each ear consisted of a front and a back, not because the teddy was a mutant.

Linked Rib

My friend Jean, who is a much more accomplished knitter than I am, said she was having some trouble with the Linked Rib scarf from Knitting New Scarves, so I thought I would cast on and see if I could understand the pattern. I had noticed that some of the scarves included flanges and had thought, Well, I must have a look at that some day, and then I knitted three of the easiest scarves in the book. This scarf has a flange.
I cast on last night. It's Rowan Kid Classic, one of my favourite yarns and a very well behaved one in that it tends to stay where you put it and doesn't slide about or twist when you're not looking at it. I probably won't knit an entire scarf out of it because I want to knit others first, but it suits the pattern. The cast on is one of the trickiest parts of the whole thing, but it's only 30 stitches and even I couldn't lose concentration or patience in that time. I felt enormously pleased with myself when I got to this stage. There was a certain amount of foul language, but that was caused more by my lack of dexterity than by the pattern. Look, a flange. And a glass of wine, I know. You can see some of my knitting paraphernalia there too, or 'clutter' as some people call it.

Then I followed the instructions for the next part. I had some confidence by now and the instructions are very clear. The author, Lynne Barr, has a very three-dimensional way of thinking about knitting and I tend to be very linear (I have been accused of having two left brains) but I really understood what was going on. I even felt a certain insouciance about sliding stitches on and off needles in order to do the setting up for the next stage. Sometimes a little knitting under the influence isn't a bad thing.
Then I had to shift all the stitches around again and discovered why the pattern calls for six needles, Yes, six. My set of rosewood 4mm dpns is only five needles, so I had a rummage in the clutter, sorry, paraphernalia. I considered using a metal dpn but I thought that might slide out at some critical moment, and then I came across these. They're little dpns for knitting the fingers of gloves, 4 inches long, which I bought by mistake once - the hazards of buying online and not reading the description properly.

Anyway, it doesn't say anywhere that all six dpns have to be the same length, and they don't; it worked very nicely.
I then did the next five rounds and decided that I had been quite clever enough for one evening (and besides, do you see, my glass is empty) so I stopped there.

I finished the Tilted Block Scarf. I love, love, love it and I'm going to make one for myself just as soon as Christmas is out of the way.

One of the nice things about making it long enough to wrap around is that the shape forms peaks around your throat.








Do you see anything you want to borrow, Lindsay?





I've been trying out things with the Rowan Natural Silk Aran for my allergic god-daughter. I tried Shag but the yarn is just too fine and the result looked muddled.

I tried a bit of feather-and-fan. You can't go wrong with feather-and-fan, I always say, and the swatch looks good, but then I thought, 'What is the point of buying a book called Knitting New Scarves and then knitting a very old scarf?'

So I tried Twisted. This is a simple idea, once you've wrestled with it, but tricky enough for you to feel really clever when you get the hang of it. I've done a bit of 'double knitting' before, using the method where you slip alternate stitches, but this method is a little faster, I think.

However, the silk and linen in this yarn make it a bit unforgiving and I decided I would get sore hands if I continued. I'll do this one later, with wool.





I had another look through the patterns and came across Aria, which is the lovely ruffly sea creature. It was one of the first scarves I wanted to do in this book, and I think it will suit the yarn very well. It will suit the long, skinny style too. I'll cast on and see if I can find a film to go with it.

New Noro

My friend finally managed to choose a shade of Noro Silk Garden. It's 226, and I collected it from the sorting office yesterday. I went out briefly on Saturday so they seized the opportunity to deliver a postcard saying they'd tried to deliver a parcel. Sometimes, I'd swear they're watching the house.As usual, it looks like some of the balls are from a different shade, let alone a different dye lot, but I'm sure it'll all work out in the end.

My friend hasn't sent the pattern yet, so I can't cast on, but that gives me time to finish this:

I had a stash hunt last night, to see if I had another ball of the yarn, and I thought I'd found one but it turned out to be the greeny blue shade of Yorkshire Tweed, while the original is the bluey green.

The flash has heightened the difference and in fact, they work very well together. I could have stopped and the scarf would have looked fine - well, better than fine, although I say it myself - but I really want to make this long and skinny, so I'm going with the colour change. And if I run out of this shade too soon, I found a ruffle scarf I knitted with it when I was addicted to ruffle scarves and I can rip that.

On closer examination, I think this might be the DK, not the aran weight.

Tilted Blocks and Parrots

I kept going with Tilted Blocks yesterday. It was so grey all day that it really wasn't worth taking photographs. I took this today.It's about 53 inches long now. The pattern says 60, but I would like to keep going beyond that if I can find another ball of this wool.

I could wash it and stretch it a bit by blocking, I suppose, but I wouldn't want to overdo that.

I wonder what on earth it was called; something like Spruce perhaps because that's what it makes me think of. I think it's discontinued.



I watched a wonderful film last night, called The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill. That's exactly what it's about, too, parrots which have been accidentally or otherwise released from captivity and live in the trees on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco. It's about some of the human beings as well, especially the man who feeds them, although as he points out they don't depend on him and would survive if he stopped feeding them, as he eventually does because he has to move away. He explains this after a passer-by remarks, 'They can't be wild if you've got names for them.' Some of the humans are stranger than the parrots.

It has some surprises, including a soundtrack which includes Jack Kerouac singing 'Ain't We Got Fun?', which for me was worth the price of admission (or rental) on its own. And it has the best ending I've seen on a film in a long time. I won't spoil it for you but I sat and watched it with a big smile on my face, and then ran it back and watched it again.


It's beautifully shot and the colours are as exciting as you might expect; you kind of want to knit an enormous felted bag after watching it.

Tilted Blocks Scarf

A friend had started on the Tilted Block Scarf from Knitting New Scarves and was having problems. We were due to meet today so I said to bring it with her and I would have a look at it. So that I wouldn't be speaking from a position of total ignorance, I cast on last night, intending to do a couple of blocks just to see if it worked the way I thought it did. I liked it so much I kept going, and when we met today she hadn't brought her scarf but I was able to show her mine. She said, 'I think mine's going the other way,' so I turned mine over and she said, 'Oh.' So I don't know if I was any help.

This is a Rowan Yorkshire Tweed. It isn't Chunky as it's meant to be; I think it's Aran, but I like the smaller scale. I can't remember the name, but it's a lovely forest-y green with dabs of blue and light olive.

The tiles are nearly four inches wide, and three inches high. One of my nieces loves anything dark green (well, almost anything) so this will be a Christmas present for her. More photos when it isn't dark.

Shag Scarf Completed

I finished the Shag Scarf from Knitting New Scarves last night. You're meant to keep going until it's 49 inches long, but I had a bit of yarn left after that so I just kept going till it was all done. I used one skein of Debbie Bliss Maya (2 balls of Soho if you're in the US) and a bit that was left in the bag. You don't really need the extra bit.

Every time I measure it, it comes up a different length anyway; the stitch is very elastic and the yarn is quite heavy so it lengthens in wear. It's a little wider than it should be, 3.5 inches instead of 3 inches.

This pattern would work in all sorts of lengths. A friend suggested that it could be made quite short, with a fastening at one end, so that you wear it as a collar with one dangling tail, like a jabot. I might try one like that.

I think it would also be good in a lighter yarn made very long and wrapped round and round.

I am thinking about making a scarf for my god-daughter from Rowan's Natural Silk Aran for Christmas (she is allergic to every animal fibre under the sun so it's the perfect excuse for breaking out the silk). I'm going to try it with this pattern; it might be too narrow even for this winter's fashion but I'll give it a go.

I love how this looks from the back: it looks like dinosaur scales.

The diagonals show the yarn off a treat.









I have a great notion to make this up in shocking pink or a really juicy purple, in a soft yarn.





Lorna's Laces Bittersweet would be fabulous, but I think I only have that in Sock, not Worsted. It would be a terrible extravagance to buy some, wouldn't it?

Anyway, I'm very pleased with this. My only question
now is whether I make another Shag in a different yarn, or if I do a different pattern.

Knitting New Scarves Knitalong

Melanie Falick is hosting a knitalong for Lynne Barr's Knitting New Scarves on Flickr. See here.

Photos of some scarves from the book have already been posted to Flickr.

Lynne Barr's Scarves

Now that I'm back in glorious technicolour, I thought I'd expand on Lynne Barr's Knitting New Scarves.











I love this undulating sea creature.
















And I always like black and white together. Or charcoal and cream.







A simple idea, but if it's so simple then why didn't I think of it?










And the detail that makes these scarves achievable, the excellent instructional photos. Thanks again to Doug.
Does anyone fancy a knitalong?

I started this one, Parallelograms, with two yarns I've been sitting on like a broody hen; on the right, a lovely merino from A Piece of Vermont, and below, Cherry Tree Hill's discontinued Possum Paints Worsted, which is 70% merino and 30% possum (that's the New Zealand possum, not the North American one). Or is it Australian? The label doesn't say.

I've decided they're not the right yarns for this scarf, but I might try them without the diagonal. The possum is fabulous yarn and should make a very warm scarf, but it has absolutely no stitch definition. I think the best thing to do with it might be just to make a stocking stitch tube: I bought rather a lot of it under the impression that I was ordering the laceweight, and that might use it up. But the scarf is a good design.

Then I started Shag.
The yarn is some Debbie Bliss Maya (aka Soho) in a discontinued shade. The colours look wonderful on the ball, a mixture of grey, lilac, cream and petrol blue (it's worth clicking on the picture) but once knitted it tends to turn into an undistinguished smudge -and I speak as one who is quite fond of smudges. I've swatched it for a few things and never been satisfied, but I think it works better here, where there are lot of edges where the colour can catch the eye.



I read the instructions and thought I could wing it, count the rows in my head and that, and I ended up with this.If continued, it might make a good collar, but it's meant to be straight. So I started again, made myself a 17-row counter, and thought about what I was doing, and now I've got this.

The pink strand is my row-counter.

I put it down while I was circling the Kaffe Fassett hat, but I've picked it up again. I like it a lot, and am trying to decide who I know who is cutting-edge enough to wear it.

Picture-free post

My computer has had a nervous breakdown. It did one of those Microsoft Automatic Updates, re-booted and took it into its head to do a CHKDSK, and it's been quietly weeping in the corner ever since. It hasn't lost any files, it just can't remember what to do with them. Or how to find the Internet. Or how to play music. Or anything.

I'm using my neighbours' pc this afternoon - they're out watching a sporting event of some sort (rugby? what rugby?) - and I can't find the slot that would take the card from my camera, so this shall be short and sweet. Don't be disheartened though; my pc will be repaired or replaced early next week and I'll catch up then. Being computer-free, I have had more time for knitting, and have got worse RSI from knitting than I ever had from computering, which is a surprise.

Before I go, I must recommend Knitting New Scarves, by Lynne Barr, which I got last week. I am not always terribly enthusiastic about people who take a 'new', 'exciting' or 'architectural' approach to knitting, since I often find that these are terms used by publishers to describe the same old same old, i.e. very large needles, lumpy yarn and holey shawls. 'Spectacularly modern' and 'fun-to-make' are not usually terms that make my heart beat faster either, but this time they're actually true.

There are 27 patterns, some easy (one I worked out how to do it from looking at the picture, but it's still a brilliant idea) and some challenging. They are clearly photographed (by Tyllie Barbosa) in close-up and full-length. The instructions are clearly written and also very helpfully laid out with effective use of colour and type sizes. And most brilliant of all is the section for each scarf which has instructional photos. These were taken by the author and really are easy to understand - they're the photos you need. She says in her acknowledgements, 'Finally, but not minimally, thanks to my husband Doug. He rigged up an ingenious little photo studio, so I could take the instructional photos as I worked, clicking away with my foot, while my hands were busy knitting. ' I think we should all thank Doug too.

Until I can post pics, you can have a gaze here. There really are a lot of things I want to try.

I have nearly finished one scarf and have done a few inches of another. I am very tempted to combine this book with my stash and make everyone a scarf for Christmas - would that be too selfish?