Alex is still looking like this:

And the On My Terms Blanket is up to six squares:

But I have started something new. The pattern is the Top Down Fitted Sweater from issue 11 of Yarn magazine.

I’m using Bendigo Allegro in the colour Amethyst. In the time between matching the yarn with the pattern I’d kind of lost the love for the combo, but once I started swatching I fell in love with the yarn all over again, and while the pic in the mag doesn’t show the jumper at it’s best, once I revisited the Rav page and re-examined more pics I decided I really did like it.

(Wierd thing is, I just bought the specified yarn for this project. It’s the aMAIZing corn yarn sitting in the guest shower downstairs, airing in the hope it’ll stop ponging. But I have other ideas for that yarn.)

My first swatch was way too loose after washing, and so was the second. I’ve had to come down two needles sizes and even then I’m one stitch off getting gauge. I think I’ll stick to that, though. The pattern is meant to be adjustable.

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I think I mentioned that I knit a Colorimetry last week. While rustling around in the stash for more charity scarf yarn, I found a ball of aarlan alpaca-silk. This sounded perfect for a Colorimetry since I’m too sensitive to wool to have it wrapped over my ears.

Over a couple of nights I knit up a Colorimetry, then knit a thinner version to use as a buttoned neck warmer. Only when I finally stitched on a button and tried them on I realised two things. First, the Colourimetry was enormous. Second, the yarn was itchy. I looked at the back of the label and realised that the fibre content was actually alpaca, silk and nearly 50% wool.

So I took them to s’n’b to frog. I’d done a sewn stretchy bind off, which doesn’t just rip out like the usual bind off. I set about unpicking it. Forty-five minutes later I reached the end…

… and realised I’d been unpicking the cast-on edge.

I’m beginning to think this yarn has it in for me.

… is what this flu feels like. I’ve had it for three weeks now, and I wasn’t all that well for weeks before then. (Yes, I know the doc said it was a sinus infection, but it feels like a flu, has all the symptoms of a flu, and I suspect she did just so I wouldn’t get into a panic about swine flu.)

Neverending must be what these scarf blog posts are like, and I apologise for the lack of variety. There will be a knitting/crochet post soon, I promise. I’ve already taken the photos.

Here’s my solution to the World Most Boring Poo Brown Scarf problem:

I tried a few weave structures, but none looked good with a thin warp and thick weft. It occurred to me that the brown was rather orange, the opposite to which was blue, and then I saw the basket of denim strips cut from old jeans for rag rugs. So I wove in stripes of the softest of the denims. It was just enough to break the monotony, both visually and in the weaving of it.

For the next scarf I grabbed some of the leftovers Caroline gave me. A light, textured yarn that put me in mind of the Drapey Scarf I made last year. Using the same yarn for warp and weft, I beat lightly for a loosely woven fabric:

And I love the result.

The idea of loosely woven drapey fabric led to the next scarf. I had some leftover boucle alpaca from a hat I knit and felt years ago, and I fancied weaving up a scarf to match. It’s not exciting to look at, but it feels nice. I’m calling it the Curly Alpaca Scarf:

I’d put on a double scarf length warp so I could weave up the second ball of Bendigo Neon:

This time I wove bits of blue handspun in at random intervals to make it interesting:

I’ve begun washing, blocking and labelling the scarves ready to send. The labels have a name, fibre content and washing instructions. But there are several more scarves I want to weave. I’m not sure if I should send off a package now, then another later, or wait and send it all at once.

With the way I keep warping up another scarf the moment the last comes off the loom, the former might be better. There might be a long wait if I’m not going to send any until I’m ‘finished’ weaving!

My order from EcoYarns arrived:

The pale green is Eco-organic Cotton and is so wonderfully soft I’ve been looking for an excuse to buy more since it arrived. The thin brown is Organic Cotton 4ply Buffalo, which is not at all soft, but makes good, sturdy warp yarn. Both of these yarns I bought to weave with the Lion Brand Natures Choice Organic Cotton. Which is ironic from a stash-busting perspective – buying more yarn in order to use yarn.

The black AMAIZing yarn was on special and I couldn’t resist. Yarn made from corn? What the heck – I’ll give it a try! I’m not sure what I’ll make with it. Wierd thing is, it pongs. I’m not sure if that’s the yarn’s natural smell, or if it’s a moth-repellant smell. I’ve put it in the shower in the downstairs bathroom to air for a few months. If that doesn’t work I’ll try washing a skein.

As I mentioned in my last post, I did a bit of a raid of the stash for more charity scarf yarn after updating my stash spreadsheet. I found many more small batches of yarn to use up. Matching weft with warp is endlessly entertaining for my flu/sinus infection fogged mind.

A while back Caroline from s’n’b gave me a box of leftovers, so I wove up a clasped weft scarf from some handspun:

Then after the Ecoyarns order arrived I got stuck into an organic cotton scarf. I’m rather pleased with the first one:

But the brown organic cotton… I got halfway through and realised it was turning into the World’s Most Boring Poo Brown Scarf.

I’m now unweaving it and considering my options. Perhaps a more interesting weave pattern. Perhaps basket weave. Perhaps something using pick-up sticks.

But I haven’t just been weaving. I finished the first sock of my lastest PSC yarn, knit a Colorimetry (using up more small stuff), and finished the last piece of Alex. Here are all the pieces of Alex blocking:

I look at that and suddenly I remember how much I love seaming…

My little digi camera died the other day and it makes me sad. I love that camera! It’s been so many places with me. I’ve won camera club prizes with photos taken on it. It’s provided countless pics for my blogs and recorded many, many knit projects. I know what most of the menus and functions and such do. But I guess that’s the down side of a tool that is very useful and works well – you wear it out.

I’m not camera-less, however. That’s not possible when you live with a hobby photographer and camera collector! It’s taken me a while to get the following pics up here only because I’m still feeling poorly.

Pics of what? Well, after I wrote the last post I decided to tackle the alpaca yarn. It was leftover from the Sizzle Vest, and I’d knit the yarn tripled to get gauge. So I had some shorter lengths of tripled yarn – maybe a few metres – and a ball of it. It would be too much trouble to separate the three threads, so I’d weave it as is.

I got to thinking about those shorter lengths. I could try using them as warp, but that would make for a short scarf. If I used them as weft there’d be lots of rejoining. Then I had a flash of inspiration. What about creating a fringe along the length of the scarf? I’d seen this done before. So after warping the loom I scrounged up some wire, hooked it to the front beam and tied it to the back beam, to the right of the reed.

Each shot of the weft then went around the wire. Whenever I wanted to advance the loom I first cut the weft where it folded around the wire, then knotted it.

It didn’t matter that the first bit of the scarf was woven with short lengths, as it was being cut to make the fringe anyway.

I worked out pretty quickly that I didn’t really need wire. Any stiff string would have worked just as well because the beating of the reed keeps it in place ensures each piece of the fringe is the same width. I also worked out that I should beat too firmly or there wasn’t much space for the fringe knots.

It was a lot of fun to do and I’m tempted to keep this scarf, not just because I like it but because it’s alpaca, which I’m not as sensitive to. But I’d also like to try variations on the method.

For a start I might try skipping the fringe wire/string every second time to make a less crowded fringe. Or make a fringe on both sides of the scarf. Or perhaps even sift through all my loom waste and see if any of it is long enough that I can make a fringed scarf.

In the meantime, though, I’ve warped up the loom to weave yet more charity scarves, this time out of leftover handspun. And updating my stash spreadsheet has given me many more ideas, too. I suspect there’ll be more than ten scarves sent off to bushfire victims by the time I’m though.