Monday, April 17, 2006

Recently Completed


Here's a little item I recently finished. I think it's called an Urban Legend scarf. I first started noticing this type of scarf about 6 months ago and was intrigued by how it corkscrewed, so I asked some women who were selling their creations at a craft sale. They said they had gotten the pattern at Needlework Unlimited in Minneapolis. (Now, I won't go on a tirade here regarding copyright laws -- I just hope that they had the permission of the author of the pattern to sell items made from that pattern!) So, I happened to be at Needlework Unlimited one day, and I picked up the pattern brochure, which had several scarf designs in it. Well, I had to wait in line to check out, and while I was waiting (and waiting) I looked at the pattern and realized that I could memorize it, it was so simple. So I put the pattern back & went on my merry way. (O.K., probably not the most ethical thing I've ever done - I think I'll have to go back & buy that pattern booklet to assuage my guilt!)

Anyway, the pattern was a pain in the butt to make (no, I won't divulge the pattern's secret), because I cast on too many stitches on too small needles the first time around, so I had to rip it out (which is not easy with mohair). So when I started over I used much larger needles and cast on less stitches. This time, I ran out of yarn when I was trying to cast off! Ugh! This was very expensive yarn (in the $25+ range for one skein) - hand-dyed mohair with a second strand of rayon, also hand-dyed. After several attempts, what I ended up doing for the cast off row was separating the yarn into it's individual strands and casting off most of the way with one strand at a time; however, I still didn't have enough yarn, so in the middle of the row I had to use another mohair I had in my stash to supplement. And, actually, I probably could have gotten away with just using the stash mohair for the whole row, but that's o.k. I'm happy with it. Of course, it's now in storage until next winter, but that's o.k., too!

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