Adventures of the NSG Scarf, Part 2

Oh, fellow knit bloggers, how I love thee. Yesterday there were several great scarf pattern suggestions in the comments. Thankyou!

Donyale suggested the yarn harlots One Row Handspun Scarf, which I did have in mind to use if I couldn’t find anything else I liked. Rose Red suggested Wavy from Knitty.com. Michelle affirmed the virtues of the garter stitch scarf. Kim suggested a multi-directional scarf. (I’ve made the latter before, and was keeping this idea in reserve along with the yarn harlot scarf.)

Donyale provided a link to her blog and an example of the yarn harlot’s scarf, but immediately another scarf caught my eye: Kureopatra’s snake scarf. This looked somewhat like the imaginings I’d had while lying awake the night before. It was also a version of entrelac which, for some reason, I had a strange urge to knit.

So, after a fight with my browser trying to get it to print the pattern in A4 without it placing images over text (it won) I cut and paste the directions into Word and printed them. Then I got started.

I knew that This Was The One within one episode of Grand Designs (great show – nothing like watching other couples embarking upon ambitious house building projects, falling on their faces, but enjoying a happy ending, to make your own house extension seem almost bearable). The colour changes of the yarn suit the construction of the scarf, the pattern was complicated enough to be fun and easy enough to be relaxing.

Then I hit a knot. And the colour that continued from there did not match.

I undid the knot and wound the rest of the yarn into balls, checking for knots and looking for a bit that continued at the point of blackish green. Did I find more knots with unfortunate colour changes? Yes. Was there any section of yarn that was blackish green? No.

So I got my ball winder out and wound up all the yarn into cakes, recording the colour changes as I went onto slips of paper, which I inserted in the centre:

(I’m going to pause here to say that I’m pretty disappointed with this yarn. With all the little scratchy bits of thread, grass, seeds and what might be glue I can’t see it being comfortable to wear. That and a tendancy to be a bit overspun reminds me way too much of Sari Silk. The knots followed by bad colour changes means it’s worse than Sari Silk. And the expensive price tag just tops it off. I don’t think I’ll be buying Noro Silk Garden ever again.

But I do think this new Paton’s yarn Shadow Tweed would be perfect for this scarf. I know at least two knit bloggers who have given it the thumbs up, vouching for it being knot free. And I’ve fondled a ball and know it’s gloriously soft. Realising this is making KFYS rather hard to stick to right now.)

Anyway, by winding the yarn I worked out that each ball of yarn had a section of aqua/purple/blue/grey. Some had an extra bit of blue after the grey, one had a section green before the aqua. So the only way I could see to get continuous gradual colour changes was to cut out the green bits altogether, and knit alternate sections in reverse. I’d get two repeats of aqua/purple/blue/grey/blue/purple/aqua.

The night was yet young, so I started again. This time I decided that instead of a square end, it might look good having a long curvy triangle like those in the body of the scarf.

What I didn’t realise was that without a section before it, this triangle would point off to the side. But that’s okay. I reckon if I pick up a row of stitches along the bottom edge and cast off tightly, it might pull the triangle back down into the right shape.

Hmm, maybe I should do that next, because it won’t be much fun if I discover I’m wrong after I’ve knit the whole scarf.

3 thoughts on “Adventures of the NSG Scarf, Part 2

  1. It’s a great scarf pattern and I have seen it done in Karaoke – the colour variations are lovely in that yarn. Noro is a pain – but I do love the colours. You might find that the scarf end softens as you go – enjoy! It’s a great quick knit.

  2. Yes Noroe does have that very annoyng tendancy to have knots just where you dont want them, and the bits of VB can be a pain.BUT, it softens up lovely when its washed so don’t let the scratchiness put you off too much!

Comments are closed.