Hi everyone! It's been over a month since I've blogged and I've got a bit to update on. School's back in session so my knitting has slowed down quite a bit considering I'm going to school 15 hours, working 15 hours and volunteering about 6 hours each week with Project Uplift and my Service Learning (more about that later). The set of scarves to the right are various scarves in various stages. The darker, eyelet orange scarf, the black and multicolored fun fur, the skinny white one beside it, and the wide white one on the end are all finished! Some will be gifts for Christmas while I will hang onto some. The others are in various working stages. My favorite right now happens to be the lighter orange, large cable on the end. I fell in love with some Super Bulky wool at Darlene's Knit Shop before she closed and was inspired by a pattern that I found on the internet here. The small cabled white one is something I'm trying to force myself to finish. It takes a while for me to do all of those tiny cables. There are 6 cables and I tend to fumble and drop stitches left and right. So I've become a pro at picking up stitches on this scarf. The multicolored, non fun fur scarf is a Cameo yarn found at Hobby Lobby that is just a simple knit 2, purl 2.
This scarf is a close second favorite to my orange scarf. The yarn for this one is Merino Wool also found at Darlene's. It is still in progress but will have ruffles on all sides when it is done. The way this scarf is worked starts with casting on 250 stitches in a contrasting color for 2 rows and then switching to your main color to start the basket weave pattern (hard to see here but will get close ups when finished). After working the basket weave pattern for 36 rows, the ruffle starts (completed one on the outside of the circle). The instructions call for a 4 & 5 size 36" needles, but all I was able to find was an 8 & 9 size 29" needles. I like having it larger, but I ran into a space problem on the last increase row. This pattern also calls for me to P1M1p. It is near impossible to find videos on the internet for making one purlwise. I found one here only it is called M1R. After binding off the first longside ruffle, I went back to pick up 249 stitches which is why the contrasting color was used. Then the contrasting color must be cut off. I was doing well when all of a sudden I sliced through part of a stitch. I was praying that there was something that Mom could do to fix it since all of the labor I had put in was about 20 or so hours. She had no idea how to find out if the stitch was still intact and if so what to do about it. So we called Mrs. McSween and she was gracious enough to look at it. We determined that I had not cut it all of the way through so she reinforced in with some of the yarn and I will take it back to her when I'm finished. But OH the agony when I thought I was going to lose all of my hard work!

This last scarf is a Double Knit scarf found in Knit 1 magazine. I found out this weekend that it can also be known as a summer/winter weave since it is one color on one side and a second color on the other. I am using blue faced leicester yarn that I bought on my family's Spring Break trip to Williamsburg, VA. This yarn is hand dyed and hand spun by the ladies who work there from the sheep that are kept there. It is interesting working with two strands at the same time and making sure that everything is falling off the needle the way that it is supposed to. I've not caught 2 mistakes though I have made about 100. :)

That's it for now. Hopefully I'll have something completed within the next week or two to show up here!