Wool Kerchief

My first FO of 2010! I finished this and pinned it out for blocking on New Year's Day.



It's about as simple as a pattern gets. Garter stitch in 2 alternating yarns to create stripes, with 4 increases every RS row.



The color changes on the Kauni were surprising. The blue-to-lavender one was very slow, but then the lavender-to-green one was KABLAM. There was a 4th color that I never even got to, which is a deep mauve-y pink. Even with the crocheted border, I was still nowhere near getting to the pink section in the yarn.



I liked the borders that several Ravelry members had added to theirs, so I decided to crochet on a scalloped border. I used a new-to-me technique (relief crochet) to give the scallops a little more depth and structure:


Raised stitches! On purpose!

Pattern: Silk Kerchief (pdf) by Kate Gagnon Osborn at Zeitgeist Yarns
Yarns used: Kauni Effektgarn 8/2, EF colorway and Knitpicks Bare fingering weight.

Wool Kerchief in progress

I've been waiting to post about this until the Kauni changed colors:


The pattern for this is "Silk Kerchief", by Kate Gagnon Osborn. The Kauni is lovely, albeit a bit scratchy; the Knitpicks Bare merino is softer, but has had 3 broken plies so far! Anyway, this is great mindless knitting, with the changing colors being the main point of interest. I loved seeing the green appear! It's currently about 13" tall/26" wide, so I have another 4.5-5" left to go.

Wattle Warmer

Do I get wordplay points for using wattle stitch for a neckwarmer? Get it? Wattle... neck...? HA! I kill me. And NO, I don't actually have a wattle.



What a fun stitch to use with a variegated yarn! The stitch is easy crochet, and doesn't use anything more advanced than a DC. It's a one-row repeat of SC, chain 1, DC all worked into the chain spaces from the previous row. It ends up creating a reversible sawtooth pattern.

Ariann

22 months was definitely long enough... I decided to finally finish my Ariann cardigan!

This picture best shows the actual color, which is this wonderful rosy pale pink. This is as close to a neutral color as I get.


I'm hoping that the yarn will stop shedding at some point. It's Ella Rae Shibu (color 25, "Mauve"), which is raw silk plied with a thick-thin single of viscose. The yarn feels a lot like cotton, but isn't as stiff. It has a lovely drape to it, and if I have to deal with little pink silk fuzzies, that's fine. Shibu has been discontinued, but there are still places online that have some.



I envisioned this going into my rotating collection of cardigans for the library, where the indoor temperature can be anywhere from 60 degrees to 90 degrees. We all have sweaters or shawls at our desks. This will be a great addition to my cardigan line-up, which currently consists of a blue cotton cardigan that my mom got me for Christmas 10 years ago. Yeah, definitely time to switch up my work sweater.

I LOVE this sweater. It's so comfy, and was an easy enough knit that I could work on it while watching TV or while waiting for raid ready checks in World of Warcraft. My only complaint is that the pattern (or at least, the version of the pattern that I have) does not include any instruction about how to work the lace pattern into the raglan decreases. Perhaps this was corrected in later versions of the pattern, but there's absolutely nothing to warn you that, oh yeah, STOP INCREASING or you'll have shoulders that go up to your ears. I remembered both Jody and Sarah mentioning this when they were working on their Arianns, so I was slightly less confused about what was going on. I just kept track of the lace increases and decreases adjacent to the raglan markers, and whenever the raglan decrease "ate" something from the lace pattern, I'd start working its corresponding stitch in stockinette.

Other mods: I worked the sleeves flat and then seamed them. I wanted to have a little extra structure to hopefully prevent gorilla arms when the silk yarn starts to stretch out. I stopped my sleeves at 18" for the same reason, and also because a lot of notes on Ravelry said that the sleeves as written were very long. I made my collar 3" instead of 4" because I wanted a smaller collar.



I originally wanted dark wooden buttons, but these metal ones caught my eye instead. I got them at Hancock Fabrics, and lucked out that I happened to be there while all notions were 50% off.



Comfy comfy comfy:


Pattern: Ariann by Bonne Marie Burns
Yarn: Ella Rae "Shibu", color 25 "Mauve". 8 balls = 840 yards.
Needles: US 7

Wattle stitch scarf

I was looking through the Fall 2009 issue of Interweave Crochet and saw instructions for wattle stitch. The swatch in the magazine was done with a single-color off-white yarn, but I wondered what it would look like in a variegated colorway...

It looks like this:


I love the zigzag effect! It's a very easy stitch (just one row repeated on both sides) with a complicated-looking result. The yarn is a mini-skein of Ellen's Half-Pint Farm merino/silk that I've had in my stash for many years. After I got a 4" swatch done, I just kept going. I'll apparently have a new scarf for this winter.