Monday, November 10, 2008

The Trouble with Scarves

Most patterns for scarves that I am interested in knitting invariably give the finished length as 80 inches. Gah. None of the patterns are THAT interesting. I do get in the neighborhood, though. Eventually.

Elbac is bogging down again, about three-quarters of the way through. I even bought myself some real cable needles to help spur my interest. But Dashing started whispering my name. Today at lunch, instead of slogging through more reversible cable, I cast on Dashing - both mitts - and worked about ten rounds on each.

First off, I want to whine about yarn that comes in doughnut shaped balls. Ostensibly, these are center pull balls, but about 90% of the time, I cannot find the end that is buried inside the center of the doughnut, 75% of the time when I do find the end of the yarn and pull, half the inner contents of the ball belch out from the doughnut hole, and 50% of the time, I have a snarly mess on my hands. These statistics appear to be holding true with the current yarn.

Otherwise, I'm liking Gedifra Volata Tweed. It's made in Italy for a German company, and little of the labeling is in English other than "New wool". It's fuzzy, though, and feels like it would felt well. If I have enough left over, I may use it to make a little felted bag or box. If I manage to accomplish that by the end of the year, I will have attained one item from my "Learn in 2008" list. Whoohoo.

1 comment:

beverlyanne said...

Center pull balls might be a myth. I always get globs eventually, even when center pulling goes ok at first. What is wrong with outer pulling?