My Gentleman's Scarf Part 1: The Herringbone Pattern or Learning to KRL!

From cogknition.org

Every gentleman should have a gentleman's scarf.

And every knitter's spouse should have at least one article lovingly knitted for them by said spouse. My spouse has neither. But last night I began doing something about it. I have tried, and failed, more than once in the past, but this time I'm determined to successfully complete a knitted item he can actually wear!

So last night, with my hanks of Malabrigo Silky Merino (430 Smoke) all wound into nice tidy balls (for a super easy way to do this, read my post No More Hanky Panky), I started on this lovely looking red herring scarf pattern by Yvonne Kao (available at CognKnition or through my Ravelry project page). 

Pattern Choice

Four things drew me to this pattern:

1. A scarf is a one-size-fits all pattern, ergo, it has to fit him!

2. It calls for DK weight yarn, so I can make it lightweight and silky.

3. It's rated easy, but still has a stitch pattern to keep me from getting too bored.

4. It involves learning a new stitch!

Learning  a new stitch: KRL

Six rows of moss stitch border and first four row cycle of the herringbone pattern.

Casting On

I started by casting on my 49 stitches. The pattern calls for a long tail cast on, but I can only cast on the one way my mother showed me when I was eight, i.e., looping the yarn around my left forefinger as a dummy needle and knitting it off onto the right needle (an actual needle). I have tried learning this other cast, but apparently you can only teach an old some new tricks. Others swear by it, but I find it a slow, pain in the ass that gains me nothing. There. Got that off my chest.

Moss Stitch Border

Next, I completed the six rows of moss stitch (row 1 K1, P1 to last stitch, K1, row 2 P, row 3 P1, K1 to last stitch, P1) to form the scarf's border. The beginning and end of each of the herringbone rows is also done in moss to create a border on the sides.

Herringbone/KRL

Now the fun part! The Herringbone pattern is a series of 7 stitches where you alternate between knitting two together and increasing one with two knit stitches in between. The herringbone look comes from the increases being done KRL or Knit Right Loop. KRL means you slip your needle into the right loop of the stitch below the next stitch on your left needle, and then knit the actual next stitch on your left needle. I could sort of picture this in my head, but then I remembered, why SORT OF PICTURE anything when you can look at ACTUAL MOVING PICTURES OF IT ON YOUTUBE!!!

So I found this extremely helpful clip from Learn a Stitch a Day:

AWESOME!!! Did I mention how much I love Youtube? The most helpful part of seeing this was knowing where to place my needle. I would have picked the stitch up from the front and tried to knit it straight off, but it is much easier to grab it from the back and stick it on the left needle first, as shown.

Challenges

Keeping track - I ended up screwing up my first try at this. I think I lost count and either forgot to do a knit stitch somewhere, or got my order mixed up, but by the end of the first row, I didn't have the right number of stitches. This pattern is going to keep me on my toes!

Reading the wool - I found it really hard to find my mistake, because I couldn't obviously SEE what stitches I had done. I think this is probably because I'm not far enough along in the pattern yet, and because the dark, smoky color I chose makes it extra hard to see the stitches. I wound up pulling it all out and starting from scratch. But on my second try I succeeded and was really excited that I could already see the swishy swashy herringbones beginning to appear at the end of just one cycle!

Slippery needles and slippery wool - finding the right 'Right Loop' and slipping it onto the needle without dropping it or splitting it is also a bit challenging. It might be better to learn this with less slippery wool and with a bigger size of bamboo, not metal needles, but I'll be sticking with what I've got and muddling through.

Because the wool truth is, I am just that stubborn :)

No More Hanky Panky - a SUPER EASY way to wind yarn hanks into balls

Yesterday I nearly hugged the postman.

Here's why:

NEW WOOL!!!

Soft and silky as a baby's bum,
with a gorgeous shimmery sheen
and an array of hand dyed grays
from deepest ink to delicate dove.

Felt like wrapping myself up in it and
singing
"I'm just a little black rain cloud..."

This Malabrigo Silky Merino (51% silk, 49% Merino wool) in 430 Smoke will make the perfect Gentleman's Scarf for wrapping up my baby and keeping him warm on his work travels to cooler climes.

I couldn't wait to dive my needles into great hunky hanks of it.

But WOAH, Nellie! There's a thing I already learned the hard way.
DO NOT KNIT STRAIGHT OFF THE HANK! Unless of course you want to find yourself embroiled in knots and tangles a litter of kittens hopped up on catnip couldn't make in a yarn store on a Saturday night.

You must instead summon patience, resist the urge to skip steps, silence that voice saying what's the worst that could happen (to answer voice, read above or watch this), and take the time to wind those hanks into balls.

HOW?

First you start out with a hank of yarn, like this one. 

Sometimes yarn comes in a ball, ready to go. Or sometimes it come in a skein, like this one, also ready to go.

But some of the fancier, schmancier yarns, particularly hand-dyed ones, come in hanks, something to do with the dying process, I think. 

Step 1: Untwist the Hank

Like so:

Step 2: Snip the Yarn Loops

There should be around three loops of yarn tied around the hank. Snip them off. One of them will actually be the start/end of your hank.

Step 3: Choosing a Winding Method...Or Do You Have Legs?

You need:

A VERY patient friend/relative with arms that don't tire easily. They will hold out their arms for you to hang the hank on and stay still and not complain. THIS PERSON DOES NOT EXIST. They may have existed in pioneer times, perhaps still in the rarest of houses. They don't live near me, that is fo sho.

from cotentinacottage.blogspot.com

OR...

A gismo like this

available for purchase for $64.99 on Amazon. A little pricey,  maybe it works great...scares me a little.

OR...

The backs of two chairs. Placing two chairs back to back a certain distance apart and extending the hank loop around them works pretty well, but is a little cumbersome and involves a lot of standing and bending.

OR...

...DO YOU HAVE LEGS?

'Cause if you do you are in luck! Just sit down, perhaps on your comfy couch, perhaps in front of your favorite TV program, and hang the top of the hank loop from you lap, keeping it far back enough on your knees so it doesn't slip off. Grab one end of the yarn and start making your ball around two fingers, NOT TOO TIGHTLY. Slip it off and wind round it in the opposite direction. Keep going, alternating directions, until you have A BALL!

TA DAH!

I must give credit where credit is due, after watching way too many Youtube tutorials, I found this one, with THE LEG METHOD (my name for it) and it is by far the simplest, cheapest, easiest way to go. I will be doing it this way from now on, for as long as I'm fortunate enough to have legs.

And now I'm ready to knit! Can't wait to get started on my Gentleman's Scarf...details to follow soon.

...and nothing but the truth, so help me Sheep.

I'm not sure what I'm doing here.

I picked up my knitting needles last week for the first time in about a year and have been on a bit of a knitting binge. Scrounged through my wool scraps and made this basket weave tea cosy (pattern here) adorned with a pretty eccentric rose garden (patterns here and here). I am happy with the way it turned out. I like it's slightly mismatched garage-sale chic. It's my first ever. And it really does keep the tea warm.

...Speaking of which, it's time to put the kettle on. Be right back.

Ahh. Much better.

So the tea cosy project got me hooked on the whole knitting thing again.


Maybe it's the fall season.


Even though we've been having our usual San Francisco Bay Area fall heatwave with temps in the high 80's to low 90's (Fahrenheit), the Canadian girl in me (who still can't discuss temperatures below freezing in anything but Celsius) thinks of fall as a time of crisp days and blustery nights, a time to make stew, bake pie, drink tea and knit.

So I scrounged around in my knitting bag some more and discovered I had just enough super bulky left from last year's xmas stocking project to make this cute braided cable headband.

I had about a half to two-thirds of a ball left and got eleven cables out of it, just enough to fit round my rather small head. I used Lion Brand Thick and Quick in Starlight and while you can't tell from the photo, it has a strand of gold going through it that sparkles in the light. Snazzy.

I found the headband pattern on Ravelry, this awesome knitting/social site my sister Jayne turned me onto last summer. Only it took me 'til now to check it out because while our summer is arguably much more of a sweater weather season...Mark Twain apparently said the coldest winter he ever spent was one summer in San Francisco...it wasn't officially Fall with a capital 'F' and lacked the associations described above.

The headband was a snap took to make, took me all of an evening. Which was great, except that meant my needles flew through my last usable wool scrap, leaving me jonesin' to knit more with nothing in my stash.  What to do? Well, it's still FALL, so why not find a NEW PROJECT and order NEW WOOL?!

That got me to thinking it might be time to finally make something for my husband. Before you start thinking I'm a terrible wife, I have tried making him things in the past, but they never quite turned out right - sweaters are hard, man, especially when the recipient is 6'4" and long of arm. It takes a lot of knitting, which is actually the pleasant part, but when it doesn't work out and you have face going back again and again, well, best not go there.

So, a scarf, a nice simple scarf. One size fits all, no sewing, can't go wrong - I hope. After a pleasant evening of searching patterns on Ravelry, I found a simple, herringbone pattern, ordered some beautiful looking merino/silk yarn from Jimmy Beans Wool, and now I wait.

And wait.

Since yesterday.

And while I'm waiting I've been browsing around Ravelry, checking out all the nifty stuff you can do there, most of it way over my head. It seems kind of like a Goodreads for yarn crafting types. One of the things that you can do, like most everywhere online, is create a profile and one of things you can put in your profile is a link to your blog. I clicked the 'blogs' button thinking it might take me to a list of blogs, but instead it said:

"You have no blogs."

Which bothered me for some reason, but just for a second.

Then this morning I was about to step into the shower after my run, after re-organizing my knitting needles and figuring out which of my two sets labeled '6' was US6 and not 6mm, a funny thought dawned on me: "If I had a knitting blog, I would call it "The Wool Truth"...BWAHAHAHAAA!"

And then I thought, why not? Why not have a knitting blog called "The Wool Truth?"

But do I really have enough to say about knitting to blog about it?

...so maybe it's not just a knitting blog - maybe it'll be about knitting and other stuff too, like maybe baking, maybe running, maybe tea, maybe life, the universe and everything, all credit to Douglas Adams and whatever powers there be.

Whatever it is, I promise:

To tell the wool truth and nothing but the truth, so help me sheep.

And the wool truth is, I am not a great knitter. I'm not likely to invent any fancy new patterns for ya, or provide much expert instruction. But I am a great muddler and a great liker and a pretty good thing finder, to quote Pippi Longstocking. So I will try to pass along my experiences,  my enthusiasms, and share any 'purls of wisdom' I come across.

Oh, and yes, there will be puns.

That's the wool truth.