Unintended Scarf

KD and I are interested in the concept of planned pooling, but keep trying it with the wrong yarns. Last month I bought an entire skein of Wrong Yarn, so I knit it up into a scarf instead.

Yarn: Lion Brand Scarfie, Bulky acrylic/wool, in Cranberry Black
Needles: US 9 (5.5 mm)
Pattern: Lion Brand's Directional Colors Scarf

Mods: Chinese Waitress cast on. I slipped 1 st purlwise at the beginning of every row, since I was knitting backwards instead of turning my work. Otherwise it would have been first stitch slipped purlwise on odd rows and first stitch slipped knitwise through the back of the stitch on even rows. Along with the "bind off" formed by working a SSK at the beginning of the last rows, this all made for a nice neat edge all around.

Spring Break

The previous brief blog pause brought to you by the amount of time it has taken me to adjust to my new computer. Change is hard.

Meanwhile, I continue to work on my cashmere scarf, at the stunning rate of one 12-row pattern repeat per day. I like the yarn, I like the pattern, I like the finished product. And I'm nearly halfway done!

For lace, it's amazingly clear at this point. That's good, since for all cashmere is eight times warmer than wool, it is much less hardy and will not stand up to hard blocking. My plan is to pin it out gently, spritz with water, and leave to dry. Eventually.

Slowly Warming

As I diligently create the braided leaf pattern of this cashmere scarf, I find myself making a few changes to this knitting project started fifteen years ago.

First, I rewound the yarn, now that I have a winder, into a looser cake (photo is fuzzy but shows the difference:

Second - and this may be the reason I put this pattern down in the first place, given where I left off - I switched to needles with a sharper point (hiyahiya!), to make picking up the k2togs where the first stitch is a yo that much easier.

And now I just try to knit an entire pattern repeat daily.

 Only 30-some to go!

...After

I have finished the shawl I began back in February to use up the silk yarn leftover from making the Pence Jug. J saw the shawl in its pre-blocked state and was happy to give it a home, so now the two projects can continue on together.

Yarn: Knit Picks Luminance Lace in Meditation, about 30 grams/263 yards
Beads: All the leftover beads from this project
Needles: US 8 (5.00 mm)
Pattern: Susanna IC's Annis in Knitty Spring + Summer 2010
Mods: I used the Chinese Waitress Cast On. I replaced the nupps with beads, and beaded the double-decreases as well, until I ran out of beads. I ran out of yarn a mere 2 short-rows short. I tinked back the two short-rows, purled to the end of the previous row instead of turning, and worked the Double-Chain Bind Off across. Yarn remaining:

Your hat's on upside down!

I learned the silliest thing today. On the one hand, I now giggle when I look at a lot of medieval paintings. On the other hand, I am comforted by the knowledge that human nature seems to be timeless.

I was confused by the description in a book I’m reading (one of the Cadfael books by Ellis Peters), wherein the man ties his “hat” (not the word she used) into a loose knot on top of his head. I did a little research into the matter... and I’m still laughing.

In early medieval times, men wore a hood over their heads that extended over their shoulders. Over time the point of the hood lengthened enough to have its own name, but let’s stick with images. I’d say “like Robin Hood,” but you may not have fed on the same illustrations I did, so here (all images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, and in many cases, the painter van Eyck):

In about 1300, the fad started of wearing them upside-down. I’m convinced it was teenage boys, and that their moms were yelling the medieval equivalent of “Stop that! It won’t keep your shoulders dry that way!” The backwards baseball caps of their day. Except that it REALLY caught on. First, they just wore them upside-down, with their heads stuck in the face hole of the hood instead of coming up through the cape.

The long ends of the hoods hung down too far, so they started wrapping them around their necks, or wound them like turbans on top of their heads.

Eventually, they tucked the cape on top of their head too, and used the hood end to tie the whole thing up like a loose turban.

 

I can find no evidence that they ever took them off, shook them out, and wore them in the normal fashion because of the weather. Fashion overrules sense.