As a grad student, I attend a lot of lectures. In order to keep myself amused, I frequently bring knitting along. It has to be specific knitting, though--it can't be anything involving charts, because I have to look at the speaker. It can't be a complex pattern, it can't be anything with increases or decreases, and, if possible, it shouldn't have any purling. (That last is just because I don't like purling, especially in the round.) Finally, it has to be portable, easily put down and picked up, and small enough to shove in my backpack and carry around all day on campus. Tall order, no?I've mentioned K's love of gray, gray, and more gray. This love is matched by a disdain for fancy things like cables. This makes my current K-project an excellent candidate for lecture knitting. Behold, the scarf of a thousand stockinette stitches.
Yes, despite the fact that I'm working it on circulars in the round, it's a scarf. This is a great method for ensuring a really warm, thick scarf, assuming you have enough yarn. I got the idea from my friend Perdita, who knit herself a Gryffindor scarf this way. It permits you to have a striped scarf without worrying about a right or wrong side (if that sort of thing bothers you). I've never really figured out a good way to do the scarf ends, though. Next time, instead of a rib I think I'll use moss stitch.
The wool is Berroco's Pure Merino on size 5/3.75mm DPNs (color 8634 "Devenir Gris"). Since it's worsted-weight, knit on 5s it becomes very dense. It's a joy to work with, although the twist tends to unravel at loose ends. My only complaint would be about the color repeat. I've spent way too much time trying to match shades well enough to join a new ball. In the process of winding a new skein, I came across a join where the light grey had been joined to the near-black. Um . . . bitch, please. I estimate I'll end up using 3-4 skeins, depending on how long K wants his scarf to be, and I don't look forward to further joins.
4 comments:
Yarn in China comes on skeins as long as . . . something really long. You buy yarn by weight (e.g., "give me a kilo of the red stuff") and then they wind it for you. It makes the whole color-matching thing not as tough.
That's neat! Is it like that at all the places that sell yarn, or special wholesale places, or everywhere?
There are two main yarn shops that I frequent and they are both like that, but there may be others that work differently. You should come to China and check it out. ;)
Alas, I haven't the time or the budget to go yarn-shopping in China. I suspect that I'd be arrested at customs for attempting to smuggle an entire store's worth of yarn through, anyway.
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