Try as I might (and try I have! - brain bustingly hard!) to remember just exactly WHAT it was that has gotten me back into knitting, having had the craft lie dormant for so many years, I simply CANNOT figure it out!! I remember consulting a dear friend of mine at work, to help me decipher a poncho pattern I was looking at- but at that time I was already doing skoot's scarf! Gill demonstrated the pattern to me on the yarn I was knitting the shveetie scarf with!! So I have no idea, it's an absolute black hole of void-y numbness right there in my brain where the recollection should be kept!
Who knows, perhaps it's some kind of divine or extraterrestrial intervention and my mind suddenly went *ping* I WANT TO KNIT! I remember downloading the Lion Brand tutorial for how to knit, and got going from there. But the inspiration-source still eludes me. Never-the-less, inspired I was! And of course, being the unfathomable depth that my love for my shweetie is, I begun at once to knit a scarf for him. I had bought some random needles (chosen by colour rather than by any kind of knowledge of needle size or material! Pearly pink needles, as the others seemed to boring in biege or grey!)) and picked a ball of acrylic yarn in a reddy pink variegated colour.
I started by doing some practice knitting, learning by doing a swatch of sorts. I got garter stitch down, then learnt how to purl from the trusty tutorial, then after trying ribbing I felt confident enough to progress to an actual project! However, as the swatch had increased in size, I realised the colours just weren't quite skootish... The yarn was much more of a PINKY reddy than a reddy pinky and really not very masculine at all! It simply wouldn't do!
So I asked la shweetie what he would like to have knit for him - what colour scarf would he like? He replied he'd like a red one (his favourite colour) - no! Red and black checkers please :) Hehehe So out I trotted again and excitedly bought a Big ball each of red and black acrylic 4ply - no wussy pink shades this time! I thought for a bit as to how I could do it.. I was NOT up for Fair Isle/Intarsia, besides the lovely beginners knitting books I now have hadn't even been ordered at that time so I was bereft of any tutorial to even get started. So I decided on knitting tiny little individual squares, which I would then mattress stitch together to form the checkered scarf.
And boy were they tiny.
TEENY tiny.
See, shortly after buying the yarn at the local budget store skoot and I went to catch up with my Mum. We decided it was a lovely day to go out for a cuppa and visit the yarn store to have a little look around (as they were already aware of my newly piqued knitting interest!). After becoming engrossed in all the little knick-knit-knacks and squealing delightedly when I saw a book on knitted dog-coats I settled on purchasing a little knit kit for making a lovely cuffed cozy for your cuppa! Included in the kit along with a coffee glass, pattern and required yarns, was a set of size 4 Lisa G needles - very perdy! So I decided I would knit skoot's scarf on the lovely liddle Lisa G wooden/bamboo kneedles, I hadn't really gotten into the placky ones I'd bought before.
Teeny tiny needles... equals teeny tiny squares!
To further complicate matters I had the rough idea of how many rows each one would be, and kept them at 12 stitches wide, but in reality they were all slightly different shapes as I never actually counted the rows, just tried to make them look square. Slowly the realisation dawned on my that it was going to be a lot of work to stitch all the eensy squares together then weave in all the ends etc.. bleerrrghhhhh!
So I reassessed the situation on the needles!
I redesigned the chequered scarf to be two long scarves knitted together at the side seam to become one long scarf with a two-by-two checker pattern.
Phew!
But the rocky journey of the first project was not yet over! I continued to use the acrylic red and black I'd bought earlier, but was using newer size 8 bamboo needles, lovely lovely. But the yarn simply didn't feel right. It wasn't flowing and I couldn't get into it.
I'd bought some snuggly snuggly lovely 100% wool yarn to make a scarf for myself(still in the queue!), and wanted my shweetie to feel that same soft and delectable texture against his skin. So I cast aside my 8 inches or so of knitted acrylic and took up some pure wool, and I knit and knit and had a ball with it! It was my first experience of knitting with a pure natural fibre rather than acrylic. And in fact still today I've only ever knit that first acrylic, and pure wool since then - haven't yet tried any other fibres - so my knowledge isn't at all expansive yet!
Still, I adored knitting the wool SO MUCH it seemed to fly through my fingers smoothly and silkily, like a milk or syrup off the lovely smooth white-ish bamboo needles. I could even feel the lanoliney goodness from the yarn!
On our trip away (which I still haven't posted pictures from yet!) I finished the first part! Hoorah!!!! So now shweetie can wear at least half a scarf while it's still cool enough!! The other length of the scarf is still on my needles, and I'm looking forward to completing it :) Where-ever I knit it (I'm big on knitting in public) people comment "ooohhh which footy team do you support?!" I don't support any footy team, don't even know the rules of the game! So it's not super likely I was knitting an Essendon bombers (black'n'red) scarf! So I do want to finish the other half quickly, because I figure a checkered scarf isn't as sporty as a stripey one, that way Skoota won't have to keep explaining to everyone how he's not a footy fan, no no it's been knit in his fave colours by his shweetie!
So there it is! My first, and continuing project!
And on the scrumptious shweetie it lives! Skoot was so stoked to receive the (half)scarf it was very sweet :) He knew I was knitting it for him so no surpirse there, but he was delighted to be able to wrap up in it -He's never had a scarf before, let alone a hand-knit one!I'm thinking it will be the first of many knitted goodies that will warmify this household with love :)
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