Twisp of Fate

I finished up 10 woven scarves from the Rain Forest warp last week, and had them washed, pressed and photographed by yesterday.  Here was the warp:

Rain Forest warp on the loom

I wove them with a variety of yarns:  alpaca, baby llama, organic wool and rayon chenille.  They all came out nice and soft and drapy after washing; the alpaca and baby llama shrank the least in width, not too surprisingly.  They all shrank about the same in length off the loom and washed:  70″ as woven under tension, about 64-65″ after finishing (exclusive of fringe).

L to R: black alpaca, dark olive baby llama, very dark brown organic DK wool

L to R: dark slate blue organic wool, brown wool boucle, orange rayon chenille

3 colors of rayon chenille

There was another one in the dark slate blue wool which I may keep for myself.

On the knitting front, I finished the corkscrew tassles on the other scarf (body of scarf was knit quite a while back):

fluted fabric scarf with corkscrew tassles

I’ve been doing some studio re-organizing and ran across a pattern I had purchased online, and some Noro Kureyon Sock yarn I had set aside for the project.  I am not sure why I had that sock yarn, as I am SO NOT a sock knitter!  Maybe it was intended for a woven and fulled (slightly felted) project.  Who knows.  Anyway it has now become this:  Noro Knots by Kieran Foley.

I started it with the size 8 needle he used, but felt it was a little too loosely knit, so started over with a size 7 (4.5 mm).  I wound up doing 6 repeats of the charts instead of the 5 repeats he did, and I think it came out about the same length.  I used all of 1 skein and about 1/3 of the second one, so I could have made it one set of chart reps longer.  Kureyon is a somewhat rough yarn (in my opinion) and the sock version is 70% wool and 30% nylon.  Still, when washed, it did soften up nicely.  I didn’t block it with wires or pins, just spread it out on the guest bed once soaked, rinsed and spun out to remove excess water.  Very fun to do and I did change around the colors as he suggested, to avoid getting regular repeats of the color sequence.  I think it is more interesting that way.

I am also not much of a baby-item knitter, but a couple of weeks ago I knit this up for someone special who is having her first child (a boy).  I used some leftover Queensland Merino Spray in 2 colors; the pattern is from a Debbie Bliss baby knits book.