Tag Archives: scarves

Two kids’ knitting projects, old and new

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I did two projects recently for the children of the family whose house we stayed in in the Netherlands. The daughter is 6 and the son is (I think) 4.

For the daughter, I made this pink and orange headband (modeled by my son on the promise that I was not taking a IMG_2677picture of HIM, just the headband. He didn’t ask why I wanted a picture of just a headband. What a strange age we live in.) I did have a pattern, though mostly ended up winging it once I realized that the pattern wasn’t working for me. This was knitted flat and then sewn together. In hindsight, I think I should’ve knit it in the round instead. You can’t see it in the picture, and hopefully it will be covered by hair during normal use, but the sewn join is not so great. I’m just not good at sewing yarn. I am good, or at least getting better, at sewing felt, though – which is how I made the flower accent. The pattern called for crocheting the flower (knitting and crocheting in a single pattern, surely the first sign of the apocalypse), but I haven’t found time to learn how to crochet yet.

Speaking of yarn, though, I love the yarn I used, and want to go out and buy a bunch more in colorways that are more my own style. (It’s Natural Ewe in “Tiger Lily”.)

For the son, I decided to play it safe and knit another alligator scarf. My own son loves his, and it is certainly an appropriate reminder of their stay here in Florida. For this I used Berroco’s Comfort yarn, which I like well enough, though I find it is a little slippery to work with.

alligatorScarf2

A very nearly Christmas ruffle scarf

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My daughter has been wanting a ruffle scarf since the very first one I made. Yet, for some reason I kept knitting her other scarves. In hindsight, I think we are both somewhat mystified by this perverse reaction on my part. I have no defense.

So, in keeping with the fine tradition of my forefathers. Er, foremothers. Er, mother. Where was I? Oh, yes – in keeping with the fine Christmas tradition of giving a half-completed knitting project as a gift, I made my daughter a ruffle scarf. At last. And the important part is that it was finished before the end of Christmas Day, Eastern Standard Time. Actually, the important part is that my daughter appears to LOVE it. Score one for mom, only a year and a half late.

RuffleScarfBlue

Coded Scarf

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I have found a way to roll my nerdy, knitty ways into one single project, the Coded Scarf:

This is a scarf that is knit length-wise, and was a joint project design between Redbeard and I. Obviously knitty, but what about nerdy? The stripes in this scarf spell out Redbeard’s “real world” name in a simple, geeky code: Binary-encoded unicode. If those words only ring quiet bells, read the next paragraph (otherwise skip to the next one):

Everyone knows that computers really only deal in numbers, and this means letters and other characters, too. All characters are actually numbers to the computer, and over the years there have been many different mappings between characters and numbers. (These pile up and part of Redbeard’s day job is detangling the knots that this can sometimes create.)  The current standard is called unicode, but even within unicode there are different flavors (i.e. different ways to match characters to numbers).

Basically, we took the four letters of his name and got the unicode (UTF-8) numbers for them. Then, we just converted those numbers into binary. Then, I translated that into yarn by making the zeros light gray and the ones dark grey. Each digit (0 or 1) was given two rows in order to have each one have a ridge.

Here’s the pattern, in case you’d like a secret message scarf, too.

Coded Scarf

One 50g skein dark yarn – fingering weight (I used Regia 4-fädig)
One 50g skein light yarn – fingering weight
(This was just enough yarn for Redbeard’s four-letter name, so you will want to have more if you want a longer name.)

Size 2 needles (circular, long enough to hold the scarf)

First, go to Redbeard’s letter-to-binary generator – Use this first to get your 0’s and 1’s. He’s added a visualization that assumes a light color for 0’s and a dark for 1’s, so you can play around with different words and names and find what you like the look of. This particular pattern is going to work best for short words/names, between 3 and 5, maybe 6 if you really like wide scarves. We’re planning to design a project for longer names next, so all you Gwendolyns and Maximillians out there, we’re on to you next (if you’re too mature for Gwen and Max, that is).

Let’s say that you type in “hi” into Redbeard’s generator. That should give you a sequence of 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1. You will then take that sequence and do the following:

Cast on the number of stitches that you need to get the scarf length that you want in the light yarn (0 = light yarn).

Knit 2 rows of light yarn (one ridge)
Knit 4 rows of dark yarn (two ridges)
Knit 2 rows of light yarn (one ridge)
Knit 2 rows of dark yarn (one ridge)
Knit 8 rows of light yarn (four ridges)
Knit 4 rows of dark yarn (two ridges)
Knit 2 rows of light yarn (one ridge)
Knit 2 rows of dark yarn (one ridge)
Knit 4 rows of light yarn (two ridges)
Knit 2 rows of dark yarn (one ridge)

Finally, bind off using the dark yarn.

That’s it! You would now have a scarf that says hi, secretly.

 

Sunny summer wrap

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Just for a moment I’m pretending that I won’t be going back a hot, swampy mess in Florida, and so I’m going to call my newest project a “summer” wrap. Also, it’s made with Rowan’s Summer Tweed, so that helps me keep up the illusion.

It’s a Lintilla wrap/scarf, much bigger because I used a heavy yarn and appropriately larger needles. It is a little narrower than I thought it would be, but I love the pattern and plan to use it again as soon as I can get my hands on a beautiful (and lighter!) yarn.

Lots of lessons in this pattern – I learned how to do partial rows with “wrap and turn” along with picking up the wrapped yarn. I have to confess that despite doing this about a thousand times, I still don’t get why you can’t just turn yourself around and stitch back the way to came. Maybe it reinforces the stitches at the turn? Avoids a hole? I think I’m going to have to try a test patch without the wrapping and turning just to see what happens. In the meantime, I’m planning to wear this with a pretty sundress here in the Netherlands, and then probably put it away until December when we move back to Florida. “Summer” indeed.

Fuzzy Ocean Scarf

knitting

I just realized that I never posted a picture of the scarf I made for my daughter for her birthday –  Well, which is to say I made it for the one week anniversary of her birthday.

I did wrap the yarn, though, and let her open that on her birthday. The look on her face as she tried to figure out how to articulate “Mom, you are crazy” without being ungrateful was priceless.

She does love the scarf, though. Since it took me a couple months to remember to get a picture, you can tell from the wrinkles that it has been well-used (my daughter doesn’t mess around when it comes to wrapping scarves around things). The magic here is in the yarn itself, which shades oh-so-slowly between blue and aqua-green. The pattern is just a garter stitch until the yarn ran out.

Silk garden hitchhiker scarf

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Noro’s silk garden has beautiful colors, but I guess hadn’t thought too much about how the colors cycled. They cycle slowly. Very, very slowly. So, as usual for me, I ended up with something that I like, but not quite what I had envisioned in my head.

I really liked the beginning (the narrow purple to yellow at the bottom in the right picture), but then a little light went off about halfway into the orange/red section – my stripes were going to get thinner and thinner as I went further into hitchhiker, because the pattern works by expanding each row (it’s a fantastic pattern, by the way!). I went through the usual Stages of Knitting, all done while still knitting away on the project:

1. Surprise (???)
2. Disbelief (But, but… It’s not possible that this yarn cycles through colors so slowly!)
3. Despair (Crap – This is going to be the goofiest looking hitchhiker scarf ever)
4. Anger (Why didn’t anyone tell me? Why did I ever think I liked this yarn?)
5. Wild Thoughts (I should just rip this all apart and pick a different project.)
6. Acceptance (I’m not wasting all this effort. I still like the colors. So, I get to have a stripy scarf.)

As it turns out, the stripes didn’t get as narrow as I thought they would (though only because I ran out of yarn). And I like the final result – using a thicker yarn makes it more snuggly than usual, and the stripes create an interesting effect when I wear it (because they are diagonal).

Christmas knitting revealed

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At long last, I can reveal some projects that I made as gifts.

First up – a scarf and hat combination that I made for my sister:

The scarf was incredibly fun to make – I bought the orange yarn, but otherwise used yarns that I had remaining from other projects. The stitch is stockinette, with the occasional garter thrown in. This meant I also wanted to block it because the edges really, really wanted to curl in and make the scarf a tube. It was a little trickier finding space than usual because it’s so long. But, there’s always a solution, and this one was a small runner rug with towel thrown over it:

Improvised ruffle scarf

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My son and I wanted to give something to his pre-school teacher as a thank you to all she’s done for him over the last year and a half. So, he picked out the yarn, and I knitted her a (surprise, surprise!) ruffle scarf.

As always, even with repeated projects, there is a lesson for me – this one is that when your yarn runs out while you are halfway into binding off (binding off!) a busy, ruffly project, you can actually bind off the stitches without the extra yarn. Meaning, out of desperation, I simply stopped using the working yarn, and just took the stitches straight from the right needle onto the left, then bound them off in the usual way. Redbeard could not tell where I had started this foul (er, I mean, inventive) deed, and so I think that it worked out okay, in a desperate-times-desperate-measures sort of way.

Here’s the final scarf:

A tale of two yarns

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I had fun knitting these two mini-scarves for the twin daughters of a friend of mine, who have some beloved stuffed cats that would love them.

In order to make them as to scale as possible, I used sock yarn. And in order to make them similar, yet different, I knitted one vertically and one horizontally. I am fascinated by how different the same yarn can look, depending on the row lengths.

Button holes, smutton holes

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I just finished the manly-button scarf! I’m not sure that I did the cast-on part correctly (in fact, I’m certain that I did not do it the way that I was instructed to), but  even still I am shocked at how easy it actually was in the end. After some poking around online, I went with this set of instructions, and all went smoothly, almost.

My mother once told me that she would gladly do whatever was necessary to not have to parallel park, even if that meant walking five miles in the snow up hill both ways. I never quite understood this until yesterday, when I realized that I feel the exact same way about casting on. I know exactly one way to cast on (long-tail). And, I’m really, really happy with this cast-on. I will go to great lengths (ha ha) to use this cast on, even when asked to cast on 100+ stitches.

Looking at how to do the “required” cable cast on for this particular button hole has not changed my mind. I spent a fair amount of time saying “oh, no no no” as I watched the instructions unfold. Then, I spent way too long trying to figure out how to use a long-tail cast on. In the end, defeated, I sort of flailed around with the needles in a way that is sort of like a cable cast on – I didn’t make a slip knot, but just took the next stitch, knitted into it, then pulled that stitch onto the left needle, knit into it, slipped it back on, etc. I don’t think it would work for very many stitches, but it worked for the 4 that I needed!

I don’t have a good picture of the button hole itself, but I’m pretty happy with it. Here’s a picture of the final scarf, folded up and ready to wrap!