Tag Archives: Cowl

Scrap Sunday: urgently needed or another cheat scrap sunday post

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The good thing about scrap Sunday is that suddenly I seem to be going away for the weekend a lot. So from that point of view the challenge has been a huge success. From the quality of posts probably not. But I do not have to read them so never mind 🙂

This time I am enjoying the lovely English coast, I finally had a proper Cream Tea (lovely but I did fancy the children’s selection with brownie more) and I had lots of time to knit hats for the shop whilst worrying about the content of this scrap post. I did consider to take a picture of the 5 cm long crochet chain which I found in my bag. My daughter had made it. She isn’t even 5 so hasn’t got enough patience to crochet anything longer than that, but it is still a wonderfully useful example of how to use up scrap yarn 😉

But yesterday morning said crochet genius woke up with a stiff neck and was crying and sobbing a lot (I guess mainly out of irritation)

So I wrapped a muslin square around her neck (I knew I should pack some of these incredibly live saving pieces of fabric in our suitcase) and quickly knitted her a sort of neck warmer during the drive to our outing. I had to finish the last few rows on board of the old fashioned steam train which seemed a very good knitting location anyway and she was ready to enjoy the fresh sea breeze 🙂

20141101_105646

I put it over the muslin square as it is a bit wide for the neck. On purpose, as I am planning to  open the cast off and continue it into a hat or actually … maybe I will make it even a little bit longer and keep it as neck warmer and maybe add a lining .

So technically it is once again not a scrap project but I did use less than a ball and it is still better than a 5 cm crochet chain 🙂

a little twist

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Since quite a while now I wanted to knit a moebius scarf. A moebius band seams so simple, just take a strip of paper, give it a half twist and glue the ends together. Doesn’t sound very interesting, isn’t it. But I had an eyeopening moment which I would like to share.

So here is my first trial, just a simple stripy infinity scarf. I have used a provisional cast on and grafted the (twisted) ends together.

moebius band

moebius band

I am very pleased with it, I love the colours, especially when wrapped around my neck.

Nice scarf but I still didn’t quite get all the fuss about the moebius and how to cast on when knit in the round. I stupidly thought that just twisting your cast on row would end up in a moebius but when I decided to knit one in the round too, I realised immediately that twisting the first round would get me nowhere.

So I did some research and found Cat Bordhis Moebius Cast on here

As I only really wanted to try out how it works (without following a complicate pattern) I made a mini cowl

mini cowl

mini cowl

The cast on row is actually in the center, I added a few rows in red in the end to make the moebius twist more visible.

Making this little piece really opened my eyes, I finally understood (a bit) how the moebius band works, there is no inside or outside, no front, no back. It is really an amazing structure. And the cast on is incredibly clever too. I will definitely knit another moebius soon, maybe following a pattern for something really pretty. Well, at least I will put it on my never ending list.

Maybe all scientists should knit a moebius once in their life as it would really help them to understand the structure. I am now picturing my old chemistry professors sitting there and knitting… 🙂

 

It’s Alene

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After years of piling up handwritten notes about improvised designs, hoping to type them up one day to publish them on ravelry and then loosing all those notes somewhere in the house (probably under piles of yarn)… I have finally managed to create my first pattern and publish it here

I did not quite know how to chose a name for it so I just took the baby name book that I have used when we were choosing names for our children and just looked at the names starting with A. I might go through the alphabet with my future patterns, although this is the method to name hurricanes, isn’t it.

I wrote the pattern in scribus, a free program that I have used before successfully to create mini newspapers but this time the pdf on screen looks actually a bit funny as all the “l” turn out really bold, something I do not remember from my past experience. Once printed out it looks fine though.

Anyway, I hope I will find all those other notes and publish them as well. I have already found so many nice pattern on ravelry that I also want to give something back to this community.

and here they are again

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As I have finally been able to get pictures with the super chunky cowls around my neck, I wanted to post a quick update.

I have to say, I am growing to really like that green cowl and the many ways you can wear them. Not being able to decide if moebius or straight was actually a good thing. And using buttons to keep all options has been one of my better ideas lately 🙂

So here is the simple cowl:

cowl moebius version
cowl straight version
cowl half open

And here the much longer version wrapped twice:

chunky infinity scarf
super chunky infinity scarf wrapped twice

And I have just started to make another cowl for a friend, I will make it even larger I think. Considering that it is a really quick knit, I should be able to post it here soon.