Ooh! It's pretty! Now I want to make one... It helps, too, that it's made from gorgeous yarn.

Yeah, the yarn's pretty. I think the other colors--the multi-colors in particular--would also look pretty.

The directions are on the inside of the yarn label, which is a nice touch.

I should mention this is *expensive* yarn (in my terms, at least) at $29/skein. Yeah, you can make a whole scarf out of one skein, but I made a scarf out of two skeins of Berroco Comfort for less. The big needles are expensive, too. And...tempting, once you have them, to do it again.

Well, I didn't say I was *going to*, just that I want to - there's no way I can afford that at present...

Also, I can't in good conscience buy more yarn with my stash overflowing the way it currently does. I have *enough* yarn, I just need to find the right things to do with it.

'Expensive yarn you can't afford' is a great thing to ask for as a gift or to buy with money received as a gift. And Christmas is coming. :-) I'm going to use my last royalty check to buy some expensive Noro silk to crochet a cardigan. (Of course, this says a lot more about the size of my royalty checks than about the price of the yarn! They're so small I use them as 'gift money' not as meaningful income.)

I have decided not to count my mother's stash (which has been quietly in its sacks and boxes for the 21 years since she died) as MY stash (since I'm not fond of the all the same yarns) until I have divvied it up and disposed of what I don't want. So MY stash, at this point, is only now working up to respectability. Both the Berocca Comfort colors are committed to projects in progress (one large, so it's slow, and the other a set of scarves for gifts, of which one is already with its recipient and the next in progress about half-done.) So they're "working stash." That leaves some Noro Furiside I got on sale, two skeins of Berocco "Jasper" that just arrived and for which I have a plan, and three skeins of Valley "Cold Spring" for which I have less definite plans but the brain is working.

Yeah, the Link yarn is much more expensive than the others I've bought/am buying. But...I really, really wanted to make that scarf at least once.

That's often the best way to fix mistakes -- un-knit the row. Often referred to as "tinking" -- "knit" backwards.

I've learned that "frogging" is another slang term for it, because you "rip it, rip it, rip it."

My mother called it "ripping out".

There were probably as many terms for it as there are groups of knitters who hang out together a lot, but internet chat is slowly erasing the minority terms and teaching everyone a few local (and maybe regional?) ones.

I think of frogging/ripping out and tinking as different things - with frogging you drop the needles and pull on the yarn and it rips out several stitches at once(which I absolutely hate doing - it freaks me out), with tinking you are carefully undoing it stitch-by-stitch.

I think I fall into the "tinking" category then, as I'm too chicken to pull out a whole row at once (I know some stitches will immediately run deeper than others.)

There's a difference between tinking and frogging. Tinking is when you unknit stitch by stitch back to where the mistake began, keeping the work on the needles.

Frogging is when you pull the needles out and rip the work back (usually somewhat savagely) then put it back on the needles and pretend it never happened.


I hadn't thought of the homogenising aspect of the internet at all. I've been so delighted with the online presence of other knitters, after decades of knitting in relative isolation, that I hadn't thought there could be any negative effects of it.

I wasn't considering the homogenising effect as purely negative. I suspect there's less social push for knitters to blur what they do, to all make the same designs/use the exact same techniques. I'd thought of it as being more like "fusion cooking"--offering the opportunity to see and try (if they want to) things that were once "hidden" by distance and time.

*blink* $29!!! ouch

I want one .. not the yarn, but the pattern ... dont suppose I could persuade you to send it to me? scan it, dont type it ... Pretty please? Pretty please with prairie flowers and croaking frogs ... and special flutterbies and scaredy little fawns .. and skittish ponies that nudge you with velvet noses?

its on their web page ... but you can keep the kritters :D

Oh, good! Because I did type it out for someone else, but it's kind of tedious. I'm much better at typing whole words that cryptic codes.

theres a pdf knitting book of all the Link patterns as well as individual pdfs.

That is beautiful. I love the colours and the way they blend.

When I first looked at that yarn, I thought that you had made it yourself, with a "knitting wendy" those little tubes with crenellations at the top for tube knitting (once upon a time they were used as the easiest way to start a child learning to knit. It was a way to see how the yarns formed loops without having to manipulate two needles at once. It was used to make wider tubes and cords than a lucet can. people also made the tubes into mats and pads.... The fun things I learn doing research as a Ren faire character;D )

Wow, the things I'm learning! I never heard of a "knitting wendy". I did have, as a child, one of those square metal frames with teeth along the edge, on which you positioned store-bought loops all parallel, and then wove other loops through them using a piece of bent wire. I made innumerable potholders that way. My first one was red and blue (made a sort of check) but then I started playing with different patterns. The first crochet I ever did was learning to crochet and edge to these when they came off the frame (you tried NOT to let the loops come off the frame ahead of the crochet hook, because they'd try to retract like a pulled thread.) The biggest thing I ever crocheted was a rag rug--cut the rags into strips, sewed the strips together end to end, and crocheted a small rug for the kitchen.

While in the military, I met a woman in Civil Service who tatted. I loved to watch her do it (but was not a good student--willing but slow--when she tried to teach me.) The things humans can do with a linear piece of some fiber!

"Knitting wendy" . . . Is that what those things are called? I used to make mine from things around the house when I was little. The old tube curlers with four bobby pins was a quick favorite. And the old style wooden thread spools with four small nails hammered in one end. I never actually did anything with the long ropes I made, but I really loved making them.

Which now has me thinking about making up a nice long rope and knitting a bulky scarf. Hmmm...

nd i had funn with it too, inspecting her yardage every day, ad encouraging her to learn something

OK, now I'm getting hooked (as if I needed something else to be hooked on...)

I can visualize the old tube curler with four bobby pins, but then what?

I took the vampire stake needles and the scarf to church today, to show some of the choir, and at least a third of them, on looking closely at the yarn, asked if I'd knitted that first. My brain explodes!

Sorry for the lag in reply. I hate it when school gets in the way of life. So annoying.

I'm not sure what you mean by "but then what?" What I did was pin the bobby pins to the curler so that just the head of the pin was free and then I would cast on and make rope with the rope dangling down inside the round tube of the curler. My baby dolls had the mostest and bestest hairbands on the block.

The curler I used was light green and had bristles on the outside while the inside tube was smooth. There were also holes along the length of the curler which let me anchor the pins by pushing the long, straight edge thru the hole.

And it's done. Not one hour, but not very many hours. And to my surprise, it's the size it's supposed to be.

If you use a long-tail cast-on, as I did, try to have just enough tail left, when you've cast on, to tuck in neatly. I had a little extra, but it was easy to tuck through the loops of the purl side, where it's hidden by the curl-around.

Wow, it's actually done! That's impressive.

Love it. Stormy colors for a dry summer.

What beautiful colours! I love the fat softness of that yarn.