Martha and Me

I have to confess to a general ignorance of things famous: movie stars, pop stars . . . you'd think I'd been living on a different planet for the past forty years. But I have heard of Martha Stewart--not that I'd easily recognise something designed by her. Recently Bec at Sticks and Stones featured a Martha Stewart pattern. She said, " it hardly used any yarn and was a fun quick knit." That sounded attractive. I was particularly intrigued by the clever loop design which allows the scarflet to secure itself. I decided to commit a ball of hand-dyed baby yarn to the project as an experiment.

It was a fun quick knit. All except for the last five minutes or so when I found myself playing chicken  with the end of the skein of yarn. It was a that point that I registered the fact that my ball of baby yarn was only 25 grams rather than the 50 grams or so called for in the pattern. I'd taken the comment "hardly any yarn" a little too literally. It was enough, but only just. In the interest of saving yarn I didn't repeat the ribbed loop on the second end. And my anxiety about running out of yarn resulted in a considerable tightening of my knitted tension. Anyway, there are enough attractive features that I'll be keen to play with the design a bit more. By the time I streamline and embellish the ends of the scarf and add a bit of length it will no longer be recognisable as Martha Stewart. That's the way I like to play the game.

Fishing

Yesterday I was fishing around for something easy to work on. We've had some warm days, so I wasn't in the mood for the usual woolly scarf or hat, even though I've been tempted to put the heater on the past few mornings with the temperatures coming in at the low-teens. Anyway, a hank of hand-dyed 4-ply cotton caught my eye and I decided to have a go at a Solomon's Knot scarf. I've made these before in wool and they're rather insubstantial. I figured the same thing in cotton would be ok to dress up an outfit on a warm day. I first came across Solomon's Knot stitch in an old crochet book from an Op shop. It was used to make a string bag, but I really liked the stitch pattern and wanted to feature it in something a bit more decorative, so I started using it for scarves. I'm not too sure about the outcome in cotton. I like the colour and the shape of the stitches, but I'm afraid that when it's bunched up it will look a bit too stringy. Anyway, for a quick and easy experiment it was ok and it gave me something to work on yesterday in between what turned out to be a serious of unlooked for complications. I'll try adding a beaded fringe and see if that helps to give it a bit more impact. Meanwhile, I'm back to needing a quick and easy project to carry around with me.

Hot Off the Needles

I put this fun scarf together last night. Big wool plus big needles made a really quick knit. And the colours had me burning along, watching for the next hot combination. This is one of the "big wools" I'm putting together to go to CCCK. It's a lot like the "fat singles" I made a few days ago, but this one is wool rovings I picked up from a factory clearance. I've spun them very lightly and plied with a hardly there fine yarn. I made a mistake with the plying yarn and it didn't pick up any dye. You'll get an idea of how fine it is by the fact that it hardly shows up in the photo. Since I wasn't going to sell it like that, I decided to use it for a trial run or demo. One skein of big wool makes a generous chunky scarf when knitted on 20 mm needles. That's a good thing. And the shop has lots of 20 mm needles--I checked. Another couple of skeins of fat singles are on my agenda for this weekend. And a bit more of tidying up around the place, so I can enjoy my activities with room to move.