The Scarf Chronicles: Chapter Two

Are you ready for another cup of tea, another little sit-down in my kitchen?  The sudden turn in the weather this morning makes the kitchen and tea a cozy place to be.  Today we have lemon-ginger scones to nibble as I show you some more of my scarves.

This first piece is made of cotton yarn from my weaving thread cabinet.  It is stitched on the back loop of each row, which gives it ridges and a deep, extra-soft feel.  The yarn is five strands of creamy cotton that stitched up at an embarrassing 108 inches of creamy, ridgey texture!  After the euphoria wore off, I realized it was just a little too narrow (five inches), so I added "finger" fringe to the four sides and the piece suddenly had the width it needed to be taken seriously, along with humor and uber texture.  This reminds me of walking the beach at low tide, with ripples and patterns left by the receding waves.  The little fingers are in constant motion, like the sea itself:

I also decided to turn the stripe pattern on its side and crochet long verticals rather than sweeping back and forth over the shorter horizontal track.  I like the way the fabric drapes when it is crocheted this way.  This grey is a scrappy from skeins of silk, rayon, and cotton, and as nice as it is, I feel it is missing something— it may need to be unravelled and re-crocheted before it can rest as "done":

I repeated the idea of the vertical stripe in blue-grey, but with more types of yarns in the mix this time.  Grey, blue-grey, pale and dark violet, as well as sea blues— another scarf of delights.  It would not have looked nearly so interesting if this more than a dozen yarns had been clumped into horizontal blocks rather than the narrow vertical stripes that blend so well together.  Many thanks to Jill for supplementing my greys and blues:

Confession time:  This was the most mouth-watering crochet time I have spent so far.  I used a very simple single crochet stitch, but choosing from the bags of yarn spread around me to augment the drawers of my own yarn was like running amok in a favorite yarn shop!  So much fun, in fact, that I have gone a bit bonkers with the idea and repeated it in another group of blue-greys (darker, more man-scarf colors), an autumnal green,  and one of browns, which is the autumn forest floor, to me.

and

The next scarf was stitched with a cream worsted wool that I added to a soft, light, multi-colored fleece-effect novelty yarn.  After stitching, it is difficult to tell that the base is the cream worsted, the thin, fluffy novelty yarn is so completely dominating!  I remember working on this while I listened to The Help on CD, alternately laughing, gasping in horror, nodding in agreement, forgetting to count and unravelling line after line . . .

It did not take long for me to fall under the spell of Noro yarns.  The long lines of color give a different effect from the short color changes of many variegated yarns.  The only drawback is the occasional slubbing in the single plys that throws a line of stitch off.  I am hoping the Noro spinners will improve with practice.  Below, the bright colors from a mainly cotton blend called Taiyo:

In this scarf I have combined two skeins of different green cottons (by Arauncania), using the heavier brown cotton as a sort of marker to divide the greens into blocks and to give some visual break between the two yarns.  The cotton is very soft, and it is stitched quite loosely, so I doubled and sewed up the selvedge edges to make into a tube. This should keep it from stretching out of shape.  A good choice for a man.  I don't usually think in man-colors, but I am learning.  And Charles approves.  What more is there to be sought than a man's approval . . . ?  I digress.

This rich gold scarf came from Jill's bag of browns.  It is two strands of plied wool that I doubled in the back-loop single crochet that makes such a nice texture of soft yarns.  As I sat working with it on the patio one day, a leaf drifted down from the oak overlooking the sun room beside me.  The leaf was a deep red, and against this gold yarn it was stunning.  I thought for a moment the leaf had simply sought a beautiful backdrop for its last days . . .

And now, the tea pot is empty (**sigh**), the scones are only discernible by the crumbs on the tiered tray, and reality intrudes with the idea of there being life beyond crocheted scarves.  We will meet another day and enjoy another handful of the bunch, perhaps after the fall gardening is done.  How cozy the tea will be when the temperature is in the low 60s!