Two Updates

I forgot that I had a couple of photos on my phone of the start of the tube scarf.

Here is how the tube yarn looked as I was knotting it.

And here it is as I was picking up the first row of stitches.

As a reminder, here is the finished project. The red in my phone photos is actually closer to the true color than the more orangish look from my camera.

And I visited what is currently my favorite local yarn store--The Knitting Patch. I've always said that I want to retire near a fabulous yarn store and a Trader Joe's.  Now that I've discovered this store, all I need is the food....and the ability to retire.....details, details.

The store has a truly inspiring array of yarns, including the new edging and fabric ones, and the yarn is beautifully and enticingly arrayed. There are lots of samples, too, which helped sell me on some of the new frill yarns.

I made one of the scarves in How To Use A Frill from some yarns i bought during my first visit to The Knitting Patch. On this last visit, i brought it in to show the enthusiastic owner, who immediately got her husband to take some great pictures of it.

Wow, so much more beautiful than my amateur photos!

And yes, I brought home some more exciting yarns. Did you even need to ask?

Taming a Tube

I've been wanting to use one of those tube yarns as the middle of a start-from-the-center scarf. The problem is, they are so wide--wide enough to use as a sleeve.

Then I noticed the knot at the end, which sparked this solution.

What I did was knot the yarn at intervals, and then create chains between each segment to pick up to create the scarf.

I then had fun with the edging, throwing in some fancy and fringy yarns.

It looks very dramatic, and you really can't go wrong with fringe!

I Heart Scarves

This is my most ambitious hairpin lace scarf to date.

It was created for Valentine's Day, and I displayed it in my office, although I finally got around to blocking it only yesterday.

The inspiration was from something on Pinterest, although the page didn't link to any directions, only to the picture.

So I tried to backward-engineer it. Here is the result, one from each end, which differ because I used a color-changing yarn called Candy Cane.

Not too bad, but as you can see, I made the point too large.

The other challenge I set myself was making the hearts organic to the rest of the scarf, so it was all one long piece, and so the hearts would be the correct colors. This also worked out pretty well, although I'm not completely thrilled.

Here are some close-ups of the middle, so you can see how the hairpin lace was edged in some fancy yarns.

All in all, well enough, and I learned more about hairpin lace motifs.

(And it does look like a Valentine's confection!)