Twisp of Fate

I have been away from home quite a bit so wanted some small knitting projects to have with me.  Plus, I just didn’t feel like launching into another sweater right away, although I have the patterns and yarn selected for a couple that I want to do.

First up was another Squirrel Cowl, which is my own pattern and available on Ravelry.  I used some hand dyed yarn that I bought a couple of years ago up in Vancouver BC at Sweet Georgia Yarns.  This is the dyers’ studio and operations office, but they do have a retail storefront there as well.  You can also get their yarns at many retailers in the U.S. and Canada.

The pattern calls for fingering/4-ply yarn on a US 5 needle.  I wanted to verify that the yardage I used was consistent with the pattern (as well as to have another cowl to wear), so I weighed the balls of yarn before and after and used that to calculate the yardage used.  I wound up using about 260 yd/75 gm of their Cashluxe Fine as color A – 70% superwash merino, 20% cashmere and 10% nylon in a dark teal semi-solid called “Riptide”.  For color B I used about 200 yd/62 gm of their Silk Crush – 50% superwash merino, 50% silk in a variegated colorway called “Stormchaser”.  So I think I am safe to stick with the requirement of 250 yds of each color for yarns with about 180 yds to 50 gm in the pattern.  This was Variation 2 of the pattern charts.

I also wanted to make the Reverse Psychology scarf by Mindy Ross after seeing the one a friend made.  It is written for a color gradient yarn and has bead placement on both edges and sometimes across the scarf.  My friend just used 3 different colors of fingering weight yarn and no beads, and it looks great.  So I did the same, using 3 colors of Koigu PPM that I had in stash.  Just change to a new color when running low on the old one (we both did this after doing one of the partial bind-offs with the old color, and then joining in the new color to finish that row).

Very fun and interestingly shaped scarf, here it is on the blocking mats and then draped on a mannequin.  It seems to drape a little differently depending on what edge you put against your neck, but I think they both look good!

Save

Save