It's all about the yarn

My latest knitting project is all about the yarn. I was fortunate enough to have a skein - 111 metres - of 1funkyknitwit's unique corespun yarn. The core seems to be a rich browny natural fleece that has then been spun with all sorts of seemingly random bits of wool and silk and fleece and sparkly stuff. I've described these bits as seemingly random because when you look at the outcome you realise that this mixture and balance could only have been achieved by someone with the unerring eye for colour and tonalities that 1funkyknitwit possesses.



I knew I wanted to use this yarn to produce a wearable outcome and so I decided to make a scarf. I wear scarves all the time. I like the yarn so much that I didn't want it gradually moving to the bottom of my (very large) pile of scarves because it was too hard to wear and so wanted something I could just throw on rather than something I had to 'style'. I was also sensible enough to realise that I needed a very simple stitch pattern to highlight the yarn. The process of achieving the final outcome reinforced for me all the reasons I'm not a knitwear designer. I actually knitted this four times. First, I had in mind a kind of rhomboid shape so there would be asymmetrical tails to the scarf but, when it was finished it was just too hard to wear in any way that looked natural. Then I decided to broadly copy a scarf 1funkyknitwit had made and knitted a rectangle in moss stitch. But somehow I misjudged the proportions of the length and width and it just didn't work. Then I tried a Baktus in garter stitch, but the designer of this pattern is right - it works best in fine yarns and somehow my finished product looked skimpy. Finally, after much trawling through Ravelry I found Jane Richmond's free pattern for her Mustard Scarf, and this is the final outcome. It's a simple pattern of a row of knit two together, then a yarnover, followed by a row of plain knitting.



I've finished the scarf with an old button I bought from Peppergreen Antiques in Berrima when I was, most fittingly, accompanied by 1funkyknitwit. I hope my knitting has done justice to her yarn.