A Little Something

I wrote briefly about my recent project committing knitting suicide.  I got it back on track and finished it.  Well, there are still many ends to weave in...

Last January while visiting my parents, I visited their local discount store which sells a good selection of Spinrite yarns.  They also often have the "1lb Unknown Fibre" bags.  I often can tell what the fibre is and they had two bags that were clearly Patons Lace.  One was filled with the blues colourway, the other bag had mostly blues but two balls of the green/natural/plum colourway.  I wasn't too sure about it, but I love the blues, and since it was $6.99 for each 454 gr bag (instead of $6.99 for one 85gr ball!), I just couldn't pass it up.

I thought I might "whip up" a tuck lace sweater based on a pattern in Knitwords #42.  However, my swatch did NOT match the picture in the magazine!

 I liked my swatch better, actually.  I liked how the single stitch, and the middle stitch of the 3 stitch column, snaked back and forth.  I realized my swatch looked like a scarf, and I wasn't 100% thrilled with the colour for a sweater....so I went ahead and re-worked it for a scarf.
Trouble from the get-go.  Every thing was trouble.  The cast on.  Setting up the pattern between the two beds.  Keeping the edge stitches on the MB knitting instead of doing the tuck pattern.  Big loops at the sides.  Yarn breaking sometimes because of those loops.  And then it went and did this:

So, I decided enough was enough, even though I was near the end, and re-cast on without the ribbing stitches on the edge.  I studied my swatch and saw that if I did the edges with the two out of the three stitch column, then the inner stitch would get the tuck pattern and it makes the middle stitch (now the edge stitch) zig zag back and forth like little scallops!  I had a hard time steaming the black scarf straight--I tried using the blocking wires, but it made awful edges and I had to re-steam it without the wires; hard since I was trying to stretch it at the same time!

This time, it was so much easier.  I still had troubles with some looping on the sides, and decided to try without the tuck brushes.  As I went to take them off, they pretty much just fell off.  A ton of fuzz in the bristles, but no actual yarn.  It didn't totally solve the problem. One issue was that the yarn is very slippery, AND fuzzy.  It wouldn't feed through the tension dial freely, but then if I paused at the edge, it would suddenly loosen up and the wire would start moving back and losing tension.  So I just kept the yarn in my hand at the edges to make sure it took up the slack.

This is a picture of the wrong side, before blocking.  Lucy thought it looked like a winter scarf.  It was a neat texture before blocking, but that's when the magic happens! 

This is the right side.  You can see a bit of the texture, but not much.  Really, Blogger?  You think that picture, above, is in the "center"?!

And here's the money shot.  It's a lovely texture, nice zigzag columns on the knit side, tucks on the back side.  The scarf weighs nothing--65gr, so it easily could have been made longer, or wider, if you bought a regular 85gr ball.  I have 35gr more which I'm working into the next project.

Yarn In:  10 905gr

Yarn Out:  10 009gr + 65gr = 10 074gr

Balance:  831 gr more In than Out

Costs:  $192.71/121 days = $1.59/day