My green beaded ribbed scarf is coming along nicely. No picture...just look at the last photo and imagine it two feet long. I must admit I did rip [ah should I use the technical term 'frog'] it all out twice since that photo was taken. As a weaver, I know that edges make the difference...we always looks at the edges of a woven piece to see how good the weaver really is. So I always try to have nice edges; it's the professional thing to do. My knitted edges were not to my liking -- not particularly uniform. I reviewed my bible, The Sweater Workshop for what to do. If the last stitch on the previous row was a knit then I should slip the first stitch as if to purl with the yarn in the front; if it was a purl then slip it with the yarn in the back. I finally got that straightened out, knitted a bit and discovered my edges still were not pretty & uniform. Upon further study, seems I had memorized my stitch pattern wrong.
Over the last three days, I have spent the first hour of the day working on this scarf to make up for lost inches and time. I have now finished my first ball of yarn; whoopie! Looks like I will use the other two that I have in the same color...a six foot scarf seems like a good length. That length works for woven scarves - - should work for knitted ones.
I was on Amazon looking for a knitting book and instead of buying it, thought perhaps I should see if was at the library. Wow, the LA Public Library system has a slew of knitting books scattered all through the plethora of branches in LA. I ordered about twelve of them to be delivered to my branch. I'm hoping they have interesting ideas for things to knit. I am not inspired to do a sweater - too massive of a knitting job. I'd like to create an interesting and unique scarf; one that I could wear in Southern California where it is usually warm. Plus, one that is not too wide nor made of wool. Plus, additional requirements - - it should not be a scarf that I could have woven, it should look really good on both sides and should not have been done before. I don't think that is too much to ask.
The first book to arrive was Knitting Pretty; simple instructions for 30 fabulous projects by Kris Percival. Reading through the book gave me a warm and comforting feeling since I actually understood the entire book. It was a quick read. I thought indeed the title was fairly proper - the instructions were quite simple in a nice format and the photos were great. I picked up some pointers on adding yarn and how to do a seed stitch. As for fabulous ideas...that may be stretching. As for any ideas for next project - the my unique scarf...none. But there were two pretty funny & fabulous ideas I wrote down for potential Christmas projects.- One was a knitted beer holder - that made me hoot a bit. It was like a striped wrist band but the band goes around the mid-section of the beer bottle. My husband is a micro-brewer and creates a special batch of beer for his friends as Christmas/New Years gifts. I always get to figure out how to decorate them...well next Christmas each beer may all have their own knitted bottle mitts. As the book says, they don't keep the beer cold but they can keep the hand warm.
- The second idea which also made me hoot was a scarf - a wiggly worm scarf with two buttons for eyes! It's a scarf with some decreases at the tale, some shaping at the head, and the entire snake-like appearance occuring from the natural curling at the edges of a scarf knitted in stockinette. I was thinking I could create some really long snakes in perhaps silver and have them drape around the Christmas tree decorated with red balls and sparkling lights. What a hoot!
I'm off the library again...I have more knitting books to pick up.
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