Scarf Central
The winter holidays are upon us, by which I mean, “I knit so slowly that if I really wanted to make scarves for anybody for Christmas, I really should have started before now.” I didn’t, though, so from now until the Yule/Hanukkah/Christmas/whatever season is over, it’s all scarves, all the time. Admittedly, the scarf I am working on right now is for me. Mine, all mine.
I started this scarf over five times before I decided upon a satisfactory number of stitches per row (36) and a satisfactory needle size (5.5 mm, or US 9). The penultimate time was particularly harrowing, as the scarf was seven inches long when I decided it wasn’t quite wide enough and should start over yet again. Seven inches is quite a bit of scarf to frog when there is nothing actually wrong with it, but at least I learned a valuable lesson about remembering that ribbing will pull inward quite a considerable amount. Oh, and although in the picture, it looks as if the width is uneven, that’s a function of my lack of photography skillz, not my lack of knitting skillz.
I was working on the scarf on a break at work, and a girl at work said that if I ever sold scarves like that, she’d buy one. That is good for my ego, although of course I explained to her that the materials for this particular scarf cost me twenty-one dollars plus tax, and it was taking me a billion hours to knit the scarf, since I am slow and not good at this, so it wouldn’t be profitable for me to sell them, at least not at a price that anyone would actually be willing to pay. Although there are obviously cheaper yarns than this one, the fact remains that I am slow.
The yarn is Katia Mexico in colour 5852, and I’ve got three balls of it. It was seven dollars a ball at LK Yarns in Halifax, so when I was looking at the same yarn in a different colour at my LYS the other day and saw “$16” on the tag, I thought at first that it was a mistake. It was not a mistake. I don’t know why it costs so much there when everything else is reasonably priced. Maybe the colours I was looking at have been discontinued and are now extremely rare, or there is solid gold spun in with them, or something.
October 23rd, 2006 at 6:03 am
Ooooh, those “you should sell your stuff” statements drive me nuts! I had a coworker say that after I finished a particularly plain sweater and I told her no one would pay what I wanted for it. She was insistent so I told her beween the yarn (not that expensive) and the time it took (forever) it would be 200 bucks. She just laughed.
October 23rd, 2006 at 9:28 pm
I got an even better question today, actually. This afternoon, another coworker, who hadn’t seen the scarf last week, asked me if I had just started it today. The thing is currently twenty-six inches long. While it would be possible for someone who knits much faster than I do to knit that much in one morning and afternoon, it becomes rapidly less possible if they are AT WORK and thus only able to work on the scarf during break and lunch.
I forgot to mention, though (or maybe I just repressed it), that a guy at work asked me how long I’d been knitting and I told him, “Not very long; I’ve just made a few scarves and a purse,” and later he was watching me and he said, “You really haven’t been doing this very long, have you? ‘Cause I watch my wife knitting and her fingers just fly.”
October 25th, 2006 at 2:29 pm
I love the scarf. That yarn is beautiful! And pooh on the guy whose wife’s fingers fly. Who asked him anyway?