Knerdy Knitting
where spelling isn't as important as awesome

It was hard to come up with a topic for this Project Friday.  Not because I haven’t been completeing projects — I think I’ve finished three different gifts in the last week — but because I haven’t been excited about any of the projects.  I already talked about the Dr Horrible wristers.  I already talked about the Snowflake hat.  (Which I really should rename because we all know snowflakes don’t have four points like the pattern has, but I digress.)  The only other projects I’ve been working on are a pair of Fetching and a very plain stockinette sock.  All in jewel tones and cool browns and purples.  Very appropriate to the time of year, and no doubt stylishly suited to the recipiants.

But.

I was getting tired out them.  So I started swatching some of my early handspun.  It’s from Abstract Fibers, in the fantastic colorway Chartreuse.  It’s all orange and rust and yellow and green.  I love it.  I love it so much I luff it.  With two Fs.  But I’m not casting anything new on until I finished my Christmas presents.  So I’m *swatching*, not knitting.

Ok, fine.  I’m knitting.  It’s so beautiful!  Even though I only have a few inches, I really enjoy knitting it and squishing it and petting it.  The pattern is the Yarn Harlot’s One Row Handspun Scarf, which works perfectly for the fluffy handspun yarn.

There are several conclusions we may draw from this.  One, that I need to be working on a project just for me sometimes.  I am not a completely charitable knitter.  Two, that I don’t knit just to turn out projects.  I am happiest when I enjoy the yarn I’m working with.  And three, that it may shock my sixteen-year-old self, but I like autumn colors more than winter colors.  Be still my screaming gothy heart.

This is a pattern from one of the first books I purchased, Exquisite Little Knits. It turns out there weren’t that many patterns in that book that I want to make, but this one really jumped out at me. It uses a technique called “double knitting” in the book, but I’ve also seen it called “double sided knitting.” The idea is that you knit all the odd stitches in one color and purl all the even stitches in another. If you don’t tangle the two working yarns, you end up with two entirely separate pieces of fabric.

In this scarf, you have alternating sections of double knitting and knitting both colors together. This makes a long pocket down through the double knitting section. The pattern itself is quite simple and elegant, but there’s a really cool trick that give the pattern its name. You cast on with both colors held together. Then when you begin the double knitting, you still use the entire held-together cast on stitches. That is, even though you are now using just one strand of yarn, you knit through both of the strands used to make the cast on stitch. This makes the edge of the work pucker a little bit, which makes a very pretty scalloped edge. You can just barely see it in the bottom of the photo above. The scallops are supposed to look like waves in a blue scarf, but since mine is green I guess I should rename it. Wind in the Trees, maybe?

I’m really happy with how this scarf turned out, but it was very slow going. To speed things up I began to hold one color in each hand like I was doing fair isle. This took a while to build up the muscles in my left hand. And even though I used all the yarn I had, it makes a very short scarf. And since this line of yarn is discontinued, I can’t get more to make it longer. So, even though double knitting takes up a lot of yarn, but it is very warm. I wore this scarf all around London, and it was the perfect caulking in between my sweater and my beret.