Thursday, May 24, 2012

Secret Scarves

My sister in law started dialysis right after Easter.  She originally had a fistula put in her arm, but it failed, so she had to have  a port put into her neck vein/artery.  As can be imagined, she was upset about this.  I had been asking for ways I could help out, and she wasn't coming up with anything, so I took it upon myself to apply the knitter's belief that we have a gift that should be shared.  Most knitters have knitted items for charity, or as thank you gifts.  It's what we do.  We enjoy the process of knitting, perhaps using new techniques or yarns we wouldn't use for ourselves.  A bunch of scarves would also fit in with my goal of reducing my stash, right?

I've already shown the first three scarves--purple/green, black Magicolor, and grey tuck (just scroll down a ways to see them).  I ended up with a total of nine!

This is the entire stack.  From the top:  purple/green Patons Lace; steel gray tuck stitch; white penguin; Magicolour; blue with beads; black; mint green; white; white with rose; and yellow.

Blocking the scarves was a learning process.  I got better at it as I went along.
The rose is made with the left over Patons Lace from the purple/green scarf.  It adds a tiny bit of fuzzyness, and I love the shading effect.  For this, I learned how to use the Magic Cams and do a single motif from a punch card, rather than having the motif repeat along the row, or having to make the scarf narrow so there'd be only one repeat.  Purple is her favourite colour, and I like the song "Every Rose has it's Thorn"....thorny things can be beautiful too.


Another version, this time with a little penguin.  She had made a comment about her bus coming early and having to do the "penguin hussle" to get to it.  He's so cute!
Most of the tuck stitches look pretty similar!
Here's a close up of the little fella after her was blocked.

This black scarf...I don't like the yarn.  It almost holds it's shape on it's own.  But every gal needs a black scarf!
 This is a butter yellow scarf.  The yarn is the same one I used when I made the large piece of Imagination Fabric for my niece.  It has a shiny effect with one of its two strands.
 Blocking two scarves at once.  It takes longer than I expected to put in the wires and pins!
 At the seminar I went to, we learned how easy it is to bead on the machine.  Really, it is.  The hard part is picking the beads and pattern.  Most of the tuck stitch patterns I was using were very vertical, so I did simple rows; three at each end.  I definitely want to do more beading, and I've been looking at my old Knitwords to find some patterns!
 This is a mint green scarf (seen in the picture above of the two scarves blocking, this is the other side).  Not my colour, and I'm not sure it's her's, but I don't really have much in the lightweight, summery colour type yarns. 
 I really liked the fabric of the blue scarf; it's an icy blue, the same yarn as that yellow.  I think the one below is the green one...the colours are really washed out on my computer.
Another view of the black one, I think.  The front--knit side--is a vertical rib, and the back is like a honeycomb.  All these (except the Magicolour one) were done on the single bed, Singer 327 standard gauge machine.

I have a few other scarf ideas, but I'm not sure when I'll get to them.  And I just don't seem to have many summery yarns, for some reason.  I had hoped to use up quite a bit of yarn, but a 40gr scarf doesn't use much yarn, LOL.  I have several cones of 30gr or less that I just don't think will be enough for a scarf, and I think they could be used for 2 colour tuck, but that doesn't seem very summery to me.  Any ideas?  Some of these scarves were from never-ending cones, I'd have to knit hundreds of scarves to use those up (the grey, the yellow and blue, even the mint green still has a lot to go).

Total weight of all 9 scarves:  487gr.  Total weight of ones not already shown:  270gr

Yarn In:  12 574gr
Yarn Out:  10 344gr + 270gr = 10 614gr
Balance:  1960gr more In than Out
Costs:  $287.71/148 days = $1.94 per day.

2 comments:

Sheryl Evans said...

Those are really nice Tracy. They will be much appreciated I am sure.

Anonymous said...

I especially like the rose scarf. I hope it will help her to see that all things have Yin and Yang, Good and Bad. It is through the good that we can survive the bad. "Every Rose has it's Thorn"

You are a good friend to her for helping her this way. Providing a solution along with your sympathy and understanding is wonderful!