A person might think that since I've been on break from school for most of August, I would have found time to post. Not so! 9 hour work days so I can make some money and because I have no vacation and myriad weekend events sort of pre-empted all that. I still had time to buy yarn though...no worries there. Someday I'll round it all up from the two cities it's split between and take photographs of it and actually put it in Ravelry so that it officially exists. But today is not that day.
Today we're here to talk about the fifth scarf.
There are no blog entries about scarves 1 or 2 (although I did get to visit with scarf 2 in the wilds while working on scarf 5), but if you've been reading for a while you may remember the saga that was knitting both scarves 3 and 4 in a 2 month period and the colour issues that came up with scarf 4.
Well...this scarf is for the same recipient of 4, only with new and improved colours, more Shetland, and 1.75 times more scarf!!!!
The buyer is super great to work with and has commissioned me to make him another scarf even though I completely underdelivered on the first one I made him, and generally seems to think I'm pretty great to work with. So IDK, but I'll take it. Glad I'm doing something right despite feeling like I've screwed this up at every available opportunity. He bought all the yarn so he could make sure he was getting the colours he wanted (I don't fault him this at all), and he still wants a sport weight scarf so my good friends at Knit Picks aren't coming through with the colours I need in Wool of the Andes, so it's mostly not my beloved WoTA (although I still coo a bit at how much the green yarn sings off my needles when I get to it). It still has the mixed yarn source challenges of scarf 4, which I don't love since the edges aren't even, but will hopefully work themselves out in blocking at least a little bit. The biggest issue is that the Jamieson's Shetland is a DK and the rest of the yarn (Brown Sheep Nature Spun, Dalegarn Falk, and Knit Picks Wool of the Andes) are all sport weight, so the Jamieson's stitches are a lot tighter on the needles and the edges are a bit wider than the other yarns. Plus that yarn is still scratchy and grabby, which is ok if you drop a stitch, but doesn't let the stitches slide very well. Since I have the most of that yarn I'm knitting on metal needles instead of wood, which means the Brown Sheep slips a bit more. But I'm working it out. I just kind of still dread the Shetland sections. I know I should be one of those people that's like "oh, yay, super authentic Shetland wool!!", but I just don't like that yarn. The colours are right though, and it's not the most terrible thing, but if I had to choose yarn to knit with I don't think I would pick that.
The scarf is half done, in 3 pieces. I learned this AM that I cannot seam it together until I block it because otherwise it will block weird, so I spent 20 minutes whip stitching and then un-whip stitching this morning, but, you know, lessons learned. I've decided to weave in ends every time I finish a part (in the case of the duplicate part I'll just do it at the halfway point) and it's far less frustrating than doing it all together.
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| Scarf piece 1 |
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| Scarf piece 2 |
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| Scarf piece 3 |
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| The scarf so far (not seamed) |
So...I have half a scarf. And I still don't mind doing it, but I'll admit that I'm ready to be done. I have so much lovely yarn in my stash waiting for me and I feel bad that I keep acquiring and not actually reducing...plus I've learned that there really are only so many hours a day you can knit this thing. So for the first time I'm not JUST working on the scarf. Instead I'm in never-ending swatch land with some delightful single-ply silk merino that I've had around forever, but that's not worth talking about now. For now, scarf is priority, I have a number of colours/rows to knit per day goal, and when I accomplish that I can do other things. It seems to be working alright.
