Hairpin Lace in Scarves -- The Goldilocks Effect

I've been experimenting with using hairpin lace as the middle of start-in-the-middle scarves.

Hairpin lace wasn't a craft I was familiar with, so I found directions for how to create it online. For the first attempt, I used one of my magic balls, and the result came out too short for a scarf.

 It might be long enough for a neck gaiter, perhaps, but it now has a better use.

I did a simple row or two of knitting around the edges before binding off. This worked, but made the edge seem tighter than the middle.

For my next attempt, I used some thick silk yarn, and kept adding loops until no more would fit on the loom. I'll bet you can guess what happened.

That's it at the top. It doesn't looks so bad, does it? Well, what you aren't seeing is that the length had to be folded back on itself, so it had to be doubled to shorten it to a reasonable length for a scarf.

Even doubled, it makes a long scarf. Still, it did come out looking nice, and this time I accommodated the stretchiness by putting a yarnover between each loop when I added the knitting around the edges. That's the next lesson learned: thick yarns make a stretchy length.

For my third try, I used a ribbony yarn, one of those made from pieces left over from saris from Darn Good Yarn. This one came out just right.

Again I added the yarnover between each loop, and twisted each loop before knitting it up along the edge.

As you can see, I knit several rows around, one of them all yarnovers, and used some fluffy yarn to set off the materials.

I treated the ends like other start-in-the-middle scarves, picking up extra stitches and creating either squared-off ends or rounded ends.

So: too short, too long, just right. My next attempt was for a scarf with heart patterns at each end, for Valentine's Day. That was another adventure!