Saturday, August 05, 2006

Birthday Present for My Sister

A simple Feather Fan Scarf. Dimensions: 88" x 9" (12" when stretched out) Materials: 3 balls (almost all) of Malva by Filatura/S.Charles; 50g/1.75oz to 100m/110yds in color #1, a lovely 85% cotton / 15 nylon ribbon yarn. To see the subtle gradations of mostly lavender with light green accents, click on image to enlarge it. Knit on #11 Lantern Moon wooden needles. This is one of my favorite spring/fall scarf yarns and this is the third scarf I've made with it. Malva in red is waiting me to make a scarf for myself unless, like this one, it calls to become a present.

Above, the scarf all folded up. I didn't block it but if I had it'd be shorter and wider, more of a shawl than the accent scarf I intended.

Below, WS (wrong side) on the left, the diagonal section displays the RS (right side).

















The photos below highlight the difference between the cast on (top view) and cast off (bottom view) edges.
























There's something funky going with the last stitch that I fixed after I took the picture



Pattern Using knitted cast on, cast on 38 stitches. Feather and Fan uses multiples of 18 st plus 2 st and is a 4-row repeat. For the edge I use my favorite chain edge stitch. The whole thing is very easy to memorize. On next row start pattern
Row 1. On RS chain edge first stitch. K2tog 3 times; yo,k1 6 times; k2tog 6 times; yo,k1 6 times; K2tog 3 times; do chain edge slip stitch.
Rows 2 and 3: K the whole row (Remember the chaine edges)
Row 4: (WS) Purl
Begin with Row 1 again and repeat until all your yarn is used up, you're bored or the scarf is long enough. Cast off, ideally, after a row 2 in order to have the garter ridge at the end.

To widen the scarf or make a shawl, simply add 18-st repetitions, being careful that the rows (not including edge sts) begin and end with K2tog 3 times.

3 comments:

Dave said...

It looks absolutely lovely. May I ask what you mean by "chain edge" on the selfedges?

Ginny said...

I love your Feather and Fan scarf! I made one holding together a Manos del Uruguay wool and two Kidsilk Haze colors. The pattern is so great for highlighting beautiful yarn.

Liza's Pages said...

Dave, here's my description of "chain edge"
The term "chain edge" nay also refer to the edge obtained when slipping the last or first stitch in each row to avoid the garter bump at the end.

The Chain Edge, as I use it, can also be found Reader's Digest Knitters' Handbook Montse Stanley (my edition is a paperback reprint of the 1999 edition). On page 184 it's called "Double-chain selvedge".

How I do it: Knit to last stitch, bring yarn forward; pick up the horizonatal yarn originating at the front of last stitch purlwise with the left needle. Then trransfer both to the right needle. I've tried cutting out the extra step of having to slip it back to the right needle but it just isn't so efficient as it ought to be so I've stuck with the extra step. Turn work to start next row. Knit tog (even for purl rows) both stitches on the needle before the yarn (the 2 stitches are the yo and the last stitch). Make sure that there's plenty of loop in the new stitch unless you are trying to tighten up an edge.

Hope this helps. If there's enough demand for it I'll do a little photo demo for the blog someday when I have time....

Happy knitting,