Scarf it Up! It's Cold Outside!

There's nothing like cold weather to make my fingers twitch to knit scarves!

TEAL

This week has been scarf week around my studio. This teal scarf is one of my favorites because it's so cushy warm and soft. Some great squishiness resulted from the combination of seed stitch bands and ribbing sections along with the airyness created by knitting with unplied multiple strands.

It was knit with 4 strands of fiber held together: two strands of a teal/teal metallic fingering weight rayon/polyester yarn, one strand of a teal 90/10 acrylic/nylon DK weight yarn, and one strand of polyester eyelash yarn in teal and copper.

It feels so yummy, I don't know if I'll sell it in the store or keep it for a pet.

FUSHIA

This next scarf was actually knit out of the last thing you might think of for a scarf: Plymouth Wildflower DK (51% cotton; 49% acrylic). I thought it might be nice for someone who was allergic to wool. It's a 7-foot, skinny, tube scarf and was knit entirely on a Clover 22 cm (8½") plastic mini-circular needle.

Each piece of fringe has hand-knotted beads worked near the end. (Yes, I had a lot more time on my hands before I started this business.)

DIJON

In the blog post from this past Tuesday, there was a photo of the first half of the next scarf. The last half of the scarf was knit in a totally different pattern.

This Dijon-colored scarf was very fun to do because both of the stitch patterns were total improvisations. Creating swatches of dropped stitch and elongated stitch patterns has filled my play time recently, and this scarf shows me getting carried away with texture.

The yarn for this scarf is Jo Sharp's Silk Road Ultra, a wool/silk/cashmere blend. It has a soft hand and produces great stitch definition.

One half of the scarf is a play with a dropped garter stitch pattern and the other half is an elongated seed stitch pattern.

Valerie insisted that her neck was cold so I let her wear it for a while. She liked the softness of the yarn against her composite material.

RUST

Last night, out of the blue, the urge to crochet a scarf hit me. I crochet a lot for bags, but haven't used this technique for a scarf for a very long while. Probably because I crocheted too many scarves "back in the day". Here's last night's swatch:

This stitch pattern is called "Asymmetrical Shell" in Donna Kooler's Encyclopedia of Crochet, which is a great book, (along with her Encyclopedia of Knitting).

The scarf is being crocheted out of

• two strands of "Baby" a lace weight, handpainted, superfine Australian merino yarn in a beautiful cinnamon colorway by Dream in Color, and
  
• one strand of Nashua Handknits "Creative Focus Worsted" a 75/25 wool/alpaca blend in the color rust.

Wow! This color combination looks good against my skin! I may have to sell the teal scarf and keep this one instead.