Been Busy Knitting Here At ICanKnitThat

I wanted to let everyone know that I have been busy knitting and wanted to share a few things I have finished up.

First of all, my daughter Meghan has been wanting something knitted out of mohair and she picked out the beautiful yarn while I was visiting her in Nashville.  I knitted a very basic cowl for her and now that I have finished it I told her never again.  I have to admit that I did not enjoy knitting with mohair and it will not be a fiber I pick out in the future.  Anyway, here is a picture of it (be kind...you know plain stockinette is hard to make look good in a pic, especially a cowl).

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Of course I had to make my weekly trip to Loopville to see what was new I heard about a neat pattern called Cantaloop by Shelley Branter which is also a free download on Ravelry.  I picked up a couple of skeins of Sprout in Natural and Galapagos Green so that I can knit two of the scarves.  Here is the green one in process.  I will share the finished project soon.

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Then while searching Ravelry for a new pattern to knit a scarf in I found The Potato Chip Scarf pattern by Barbara Aguair.  It is such a great pattern and I highly recommend it.  I knew that my daughter Caitlin would love the ruffles and it was her suggestion to stitch it together so that she could wear it as a cowl.

Barbara agreed to let me share the pattern so here it is:

Potato Chip Scarf (Because you can't knit just one!)

You need 200 yds. of a worsted weight yarn.

US11 needles

Cast on 20 stitches

Row 1.knit 8, turn, knit back to beginning.

Row 2.knit  6, turn, knit back to beginning

Row 3. Knit 4, turn, knit back to beginning

Knit across all 20 st.

Repeat these rows until desired length is reached. End off.

Not Everything Turns Out

Several months ago I bought 3 hanks of Berroco Seduce yarn in Lagoon (4419).

I bought this beautiful rich colored yarn with the intent of knitting a beautiful stay put shawl for my mother.  I knew that she would love the color and was very excited to get started.  I started knitting it and just did not like the way it looked so I unraveled it and put the yarn in my stash.  This past weekend while organizing my yarn I looked in my stash and decided I would knit a fast scarf with the yarn and wanted it very light and easy.  So I decided to knit with 13US needles and just do a garter stitch for the whole scarf.  Once I got the scarf to about the right length I cast off my stitches and took a serious look at the scarf.  I loved the open stitch but HATED the way the edges looked.  To put it bluntly they were just UGLY.  I even tried to crochet (I hate to crochet) the edges but did not like that either.  Needless to say...I unraveled the whole scarf and pitched the yarn back into my stash.

Today I went into my favorite yarn shop and told Pearl about my experience and that I just did not like the yarn since I could not seem to knit anything with it that I was happy with.  Just about then a lady came into the shop who designs patterns and has a beautiful scarf hanging in Loopville knitted out of Seduce yarn.  I told her my dilemma and of course the first thing she asked me is...did you wet block the scarf?  I felt like such an idiot...of course I hadn't even tried to block the scarf!

The moral of this story is...sometimes things just do not turn out right and sometimes you just give up without doing the most obvious thing...blocking your work!