Making Progress...

On Christmas knitting.  I decided to do a spiral scarf based on the one (don't know what it's called) from Handknit Holidays  for one of the teacher gifts.  You know, you cast on like 200 stitches and increase in every 4th row until you get 3200 stitches and it makes this great spiral thing?  Sounded like a good idea at the time.

I had this discontinued Berocco Mohair Classic Heather in my stash even.  Got it for a song.  None of the yummy colors sold, and this is the reason:  it is hellishly scratchy and crunchy in the ball.  So much so that it reminds me of some kind of unpleasant hair dried in the shower drain.  Really bad.  In the ball.  But I know from experience (because I bought a grey of the same discontinued yarn because I loved the color and ) that this stuff is really soft and warm and did I say soft? once it spends a half an hour in a cold bath with one drop of Dawn dish detergent. So...here I am about a fifth of the way through casting off 3200 stitches.  I said based on the scarf in the book because since we sold the last one before I could buy it, but I had already read the pattern, I'm reconstructing while waiting for the re-ordered book to come back in...it says, I think, to cast off loosely.  Well, I can't do that, so I'm using the cast off from the Flower Basket Shawl.  You knit two, put the left needle through the fronts of the two stitches, knit them together through the back loop, knit another stitch, and repeat.  Now that's a loose cast off.  Lets the spiral really do it's thing!  The pattern also calls for the cast off row to be a different, maybe blingy, yarn.  But this mohair is so different that I couldn't find anything I liked.  The core of this yarn is dark purple and red.  The mohair is brown and red and -- get this -- lime.  I swear, there are lime colored fizzy bits if you look at this stuff in the sun.  It reads rusty copper, but it has great depth.  So I left it alone.  And miles to cast off before I sleep...

Also progress on the Alpaca Mistake Rib Scarf.  But, I've been making lots of mistakes in the ribbing though.  Hmmm...so it's been in the knitting bag while I work on the spiraly thing.  This one, at least is lovely and soft and drapey without a long bath. 

Oh, and, by the way...literary allusion lurking above.  Prizes anyone?   Guess it and win. 

Comments

[Ruth]

Robert Frost ... "Stopping By The Woods on a Snowy Evening"

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

I love that poem.

[Shara]

The spiral scarf is going to be beautiful. My mom is knitting one that is similar and I may have to borrow her pattern to try my hand at it.