Bella Knitting

Recipe for a Scarflet

Sarah

As I mentioned in a post a few weeks ago, scarflets appeal to my limited attention span and the common knitterly desire to have at least one easily portable project on the needles at all times. I made a few this winter, and gave a couple away as gifts. This one is probably my favorite -- a little Malabrigo scarflet for my friend CC, who lives in Seattle. A little linen stitch broke up any pooling (this is the Azalea colorway in the worsted weight, if you're wondering), and garter-stitch edges provided a nice finish.

A scarflet is nice because it just covers the bit of your neck that needs covering, without a lot of extra fabric flying around or forming an unsightly lump under your coat. Plus, it's a good way to show off a few pretty buttons. Want to make one? Click to continue through to the rest of the post for my linen-stitch scarflet "recipe" and a photo of this one in action.

Happy Feet

Sarah

Once in a very great while, it occurs to me that planning ahead for the holidays is a good idea. Such was the case with these socks, which were a joint gift to my mom from my sister and I (the link is to her new animal-training blog). I spun the yarn -- if you want to take a trip in the way-back machine, you can see that I blogged about it in July -- and Emily knit the socks. She chose a great stitch pattern, adding textural interest to the self-striping yarn.

The gansey I'm knitting for my dad was not as much of an unqualified success, however -- I had all but three-quarters of a sleeve finished by Christmas morning, but I had him try it on and the first sleeve just didn't fit right. So, I've finished knitting the second sleeve (correctly) and now I just have to rip and reknit the other one. How did everyone else's holiday knitting go? I've heard rumors that someone is going to be starting a project-a-month holiday gift knitalong -- I think I may need to join so that I can be better prepared next year!

Scarflets

Sarah

While I think I'd be bored to tears if I had to knit a bunch of scarves for holiday gifts, I have happily cranked out a couple of scarflets over the past couple of days.

This one is a little keyhole scarflet, and it's probably just about a yard long. I don't have a definite giftee in mind, but I may give this or something like it to the teacher I've been observing, as I've really learned a lot by sitting in on her class, and she's been really generous with her time.

If you're curious, I used a version of brioche stitch called "patent knitting" which Laura described here. To make the keyhole, I knit the center stitches in garter stitch for a couple of rows, bound a few off then cast on the same number in the following row, knit a few more rows with those center stitches in garter stitch, then resumed normal programming over the whole thing. The only reason I changed the center stitches to garter was to keep the area around the keyhole more tidy -- if you're doing a keyhole scarf in a different stitch, this may not be necessary.

It's Ease-y

Sarah

As you may have gathered, I was not terribly happy with the accuracy of the swatch I knit for my dad's gansey. I cast on enough stitches -- I thought -- to get a chest measurement of about 42 inches, I ended up with a sweater that was a shade under 40. I was worried. Luckily, my parents came up to visit this weekend, so I was able to have my dad try on the sweater body. You know what? It fit pretty well. I was going for zero ease, but the sweater looked fine with a slight amount of negative ease.

It was unfortunate that I had to ruin the surprise and show my dad the sweater in progress, but at least I know that he likes the color, and I was able to confer with him about the exact length he wanted. I'm still unhappy that my swatch lied, but at least I didn't have to start over or repurpose the sweater. Over the weekend, I was even able to get the patterned front half (knit flat) done, and I'm about a third of the way through the back. Next, I'll be joining the shoulders and picking up for the sleeves -- I'm interested to see how the underarm gusset thingies work out, since I've never knit a sweater with those before.

Gansey

Sarah

I've had a lot of un-bloggable knitting going on lately, so of course I had to cast on for something new. I know I could probably crank out the last bit of my Minimalist Cardigan (one sleeve and I'm done) in a couple of days, but that's something I'm knitting for myself -- I figured I should probably spend my limited knitting time working on more Christmas gifts.

This is a special gift -- a sweater for my dad. I've knit him a couple before, but the first one was my first-ever sweater, and...well, it looks like a first sweater (worse yet, I kind of made up the pattern as I went along). The second just wasn't as good as it should be -- I think my dad deserves a really perfect sweater. Since he and my mom are planning a trip to Ireland, I think it would be nice for him to have a soft, tweedy gansey to bring along. The yarn is Rowan Soft Tweed, which is one of those Rowan yarns which debuts at an exorbitant price, then a year later is deeply discounted or on clearance everywhere. (Luckily, I picked this up on the discount side of things.) I like how it feels knitted up, especially at the slightly tighter-than-recommended gauge I'm knitting it at, but I don't really love knitting with it. It's not bad, but it's not one of those yarns your fingers will instantly fall in love with.

I'll be knitting the body of the sweater in stockinette, with a single column of purl stitches on each side mimicking a seam. The chest will have some sort of patterning, though I haven't decided what -- I've been looking through Alice Starmore's Fisherman's Sweaters book, and my Barbara Walker treasuries, for inspiration. Since this is such a chunky yarn, I want to keep things simple, and classic. I also want to actually finish this one in time to give it to my dad on Christmas morning. I think the last sweater I knit for my dad was supposed to be a birthday present...which I think it ended up being, the following year!