Showing posts with label column of leaves. Show all posts
Showing posts with label column of leaves. Show all posts

Monday, December 5, 2011

Christmas Scarf #1

Although I finished knitting this scarf a couple weeks ago, it took me forever to actually block and finish the scarf (though that might be because I knew I had plenty of time before Christmas and was in no hurry to have a wet scarf draped across my small apartment.)

Fortunately, the knitting of this scarf was remarkably easy. Although the pattern is a bit challenging because of all the yarn-overs (and the complex border that just begs for errors that will be abundantly obviously when finished!) Fortunately, since I'd already knitted this pattern once before, I found that after just a couple repeats the pattern came right back to memory.

Although it too much longer to knit than I first expected, I'm fairly happy with the result. I used a rather light-weight yarn, so the end scarf is extremely light-weight as well. As a side note (and this may be the case with all blocking), the pattern greatly expands during the blocking process. I had originally hoped to make this scarf a foot longer, but a major mistake made me cast off many "leaves" earlier than planned; however, I discovered that that was quite the blessing when viewing the long length after blocking!

Thursday, October 28, 2010

The Magic of Blocking

Since it's been ages since I last completed a knitting project, I decided it was about time to pick up the old knitting needles. I have been wanting to try this column of leaves scarf pattern for awhile now. It was an exceptionally slow pattern for the first several "leaves" due to the fact that every single row in the pattern is a slightly different mixture of knit, purl, and other more complex stitches; however, once the pattern is finally memorized, it certainly speeds up!

To knit this scarf, I used worsted-weight wool yarn on size-6 needles. I was pleasantly surprised at the ease of knitting with wool - I only tried acrylic and cotton in the past. This was also the first time I've ever actually blocked a finished project. I was amazed at how much nicer my pattern looked once I was finished. Any pattern that has lace aspects to it definitely needs the blocking to help stretch it out (though blocking did add a couple feet to my finished project!)