scarf

In 2011 I knit a lot of scarves for charity. In spring, I learned a new stitch, the "half patent" as it is called in Germany and I guess it's called brioche stitch in English. Please correct me if I'm wrong!

Anyhow, I got bitten by the scarf bug and I made scarf after scarf with this new stitch, plowing through my stash of woolen, warm yarns in different weights. Last year I had donated some scarves and hats to the homeless in a nearby city, and exactly these homeless people I had in mind right from the beginning.

I finished 8 scarves in brioche stitch in 2011! Here they all are. There's also a hat I made and a scarf I made in 2012, and that's what I sent to the charity to donate for the homeless a few weeks ago. Good timing it was, as it's just now starting to get really cold here.

I am still working on scarves for charity, using up my supply of single balls of wool (blends) and half balls left from other projects. I haven't made much progress this summer, but here are three. That's better than none, no?

The first one is made with local German sheep's wool (orange), Finnish wool (grey) and industrial made green vintage German yarn called Tiffany, which I used in a scarf I made in May, too.

I wanted to use the orange yarn to "bind" the design, but noticed I wouldn't have enough to continue making wide stripes with it. So at around halfway through the scarf, I changed the striping and made all three colours exactly the same width.

I think it looks really nice and certainly original, don't you think?

I have another Ysolda design FO which I actually finished a long time ago. Sometimes the taking pictures part takes longer than the knitting, don't you agree?

It's the Scroll Lace Scarf by Ysolda, and I knit it with a little more than one ball of Hempathy , which is a lovely yarn with 40% hemp, 40% cotton and 20% modal. I had never knit with hemp before, and I was surprised how soft the yarn was. I am definately planning on getting more hemp yarns to try out.

My charity knits are coming along slowly, but coming along anyway!

Here are two scarves I knit some time back - using up stash and looking forward to giving them to someone in need.

The left one is made with local sock yarn from Wollkontor Erlangen, some Finnish wool and an old yarn called Tiffany. It was knit in fisherman's rib with 4 mm needles, and it's about 1,70 long. I think it used about 200 grams of yarn!

The right one is made in Novita Isoveli yarn, a bulky woolen yarn. It was knit on 5 mm needles and in -surprise surprise - fisherman's rib!

It used up all the Isoveli I had left, about 200 grams, and the scarf is a bit short with 150 cm, but it's so warm I hope it will do.

I've also updated my 2011 charity list with these scarves!

The weather is getting warmer, the Sun is shining, it's almost time to leave the jacket at home and go out in a t-shirt.

So why on Earth am I knitting heavy woolen scarves?

There are two reasons. First: they are for charity, and as I am way behind on my "knit 50 items for charity" resolution, I have to start somewhere, and I liked the idea of scarves.

Second: I am currently on a major stash busting spree! I p want less, less, less yarn in my closet! Using up odd balls of wool and wool blend yarns is best done with striped scarves, won't you agree?

Look at these pretty scarves! They're all made exclusively with reused yarn and scarps and half-balls from my stash.

Maybe you can recognize the purple yarn? I ripped my Hug shrug, which was finished in 2008 and after that was worn less than 10 times altogether. It's now been reworked into 1 1/2 scarves which I will be donating to the homeless people in Duisburg, a neighbour city where an active knitter has organised a collection for warm knits for the homeless this winter.

The other 1/2 of the second scarf is also made with Novita Rustika, the leftovers I had from my Rustic shawl. Both scarves are knit on 8mm needles. The "pattern" was rather simple - cast on 18 stitches and knit, knit, knit until the yarn runs out or the scarf is about 1,70 meters long!

Once in a while my attention gets drawn to the misccellaneous bags in my stash closet, the ones with yarn ends and half balls, the leftover yarns from bigger projects and maybe a few full balls with yarn I don't really know what to do with. To be honest, my attention is actually drawn to the fact that the bags are packed if not overflowing. This is usually the time I take out the bags, take a look at the yarns inside and decide to start a stashbusting project.
 
This time I decided to knit some simple striped scarves. I've knit stashbusting scarves before (examples here and here), but none in the last year or so. So even though the summer is coming, I picked up my woolen yarns and cast on.
 

I made a Rinsessa hat for myself last winter, and am loving it still! So this winter I decided to knit myself a thick, wide scarf with the same rinsessa-mock-cable stitch. So I took the Rinsessa scarf pattern (in Finnish), modified it a bit for thicker yarn and started knitting.

Here are the stats:
Pattern as mentioned above
Needles: 4mm
Yarn: Novita Anni wool blend (40% wool, 35% acrylic, 25% polyamide), the leftovers from my Bramblewood vest, ca 250 grams
Modifications: cast on 63 stitches. It says one should cast on a number dividable by six to make the pattern match, but I found it looked better with the extra three stitches aka half the pattern repeat in it - that way both edges look the same.

I've had this finished for weeks, and finally I get to blog about it! It was originally my June small item, and I finished it sometime during summer. This was also the project I knit on my wedding day, so it has some sentimental signifigance too!

It's a lacey sock yarn scarf. The yarn I used is YarnAddicts Bamboo sock yarn (in colourway Pink goth, which I received in a swap a few years back. The yarn has since been discontinued.)

The pattern is called The scarf with no name (Ravelry link) and I knit it on 4mm needles. The pattern calls for 24 repeats of the lace chart - I think I did 27. The scarf is really long now after blocking!

Remember the banana silk yarn I received as gift a while back? I finally cast it on, ancdvery quickly cast it off too, as it knits up really quick!

I made the Juicy banana silk scarf (Ravelry link) and even though it calls for two hanks of the yarn, I managed very well with just one, I just left the tassels off and made the scarf a bit shorter - I reckon it measures two meters. I made it with 8mm needles.