Scarves

The vacation euphoria is wearing thin and things are getting back to normal - the AM routine has resumed in it's habitual glory and I'm back to my most exciting decision of the morning being which scarf I'll wear as I leave the house . My life is so exciting.

This morning I realized that one of the most popular scarves in my arsenal has yet to get any blog play, and she's been going strong out there in the streets of New York for a couple months already. Allow me to introduce you.

Pattern: Generic Garter Stitch Scarf
Materials: My Handspun (see below for details)
Needles: US6/4.0mm bamboo
Dimensions: 6" width, 71" length

Started: November 2007
Finished: January 2008

One of the greatest things about handspun, aside from the fact that it's so incredibly rewarding to work with, is that the yarn carries everything. There's really no need for fancy stitchwork or impressive knitting acrobatics. In fact, I would venture to say that handspun is at its most impressive while standing alone in garter. This may be one of the reasons I have multiple of these scarves started - the same pattern can have multiple personalities with various handspun yarns. And they're really fun to knit (something so beautiful shouldn't be so easy. It's dangerous).


I knit this scarf with two skeins of dk-weight 2-ply merino, just over 6 oz of wool. The fiber is Hello Yarn (I don't have a problem.. really I don't) and entitled "Espresso". The pre-spun fiber looked like this.

[Sidenote: I've received a lot of comments/e-mails from people who love seeing handspun yarn alongside their pre-spun fiber predecessors for comparisons sake. Would you all be interested in a very informal post about the anatomy of a handspun, with pictures from start to finish?]

And while I had my camera at the ready, I thought I'd take some pictures of an oldie that I knit back in 2005. Up for it's 2 year review - the So-Called Scarf:


This was knit with Manos Del Uruguay. Pattern is here. A quick review - this scarf doesn't get much wear unfortunately, despite the fact that I like to look at it. I knit this in the days before Malabrigo, and now that I have scarves in both Manos and Malabrigo, the scratchier of the two (Manos) definitely gets neglected. They both pill, so that's not really an issue either. And Malabrigo is butter... so what am I to do?


I realize scarf weather is slowly disappearing - spring is coming and everyone is excited, so I'm getting as much wool-wearing in as possible. I love spring as much as the next guy, but the thing is, I think I love winter waaaay more than the next guy, so I'm always slightly sad to see it disappear. I guess I'll just have to enjoy all this extra sunlight...