Letting the yarn do all the work.

I (Charles) found this hand-dyed yarn by Stitch Noir about 2 years ago at a fibre festival in Hamilton, Ontario called the Fibre Forge (https://www.thefibreforge.ca/) If you live in the Golden Horseshoe, it’s definitely worth the drive as there are many Canadian, and Ontario vendors, and there is always something new.

As soon as I saw the yarn hanks displayed together, I knew what I would knit with them. I also knew that I would be alternating them as stripes. What I didn’t know was how Amanda (the dyer at Stitch Noir —http://www.stitchnoir.com) had dyed the yarn.

What struck me when I saw both hanks was the way the mohair silk lace yarn base had taken the colours. The hank reminded me of a yellow tabby cat. When I got close and lifted the hanks to hold them I saw that the cotton slubby bouclé yarn was named the same colorway: Pumpkin King. I asked why it didn’t look the same. Amanda explained that the cotton in the bouclé yarn absorbed the colours differently, and the more orange and rust colours ended up speckling the yarn, whereas in the silk-mohair blend the yellow was less pronounced, even though both yarns had been in the same dye bath.

With a tabby cat image in my mind, I knew that I needed to knit up stripes, but I didn’t want to knit a scarf across the width… and knitting it along the length also felt too ordinary. So I settled on using a diagonal.

It’s hard to tell while it’s still on the needles, but I started this with 10 sts. Every other row I cast on 10 more. Every 4 rows I changed yarns. The cotton slub yarn is just 4 knit rows. For the mohair, on row 2 of every mohair stripe, I did the following: *K2, k8-double-wrapped; repeat from *. On the third mohair row, you knit the double-wrapped stitches, letting one of the loops fall as you slide it off the left-hand needle. That’s the design… I continued increasing till my scarf measured 6 feet.

Then I weighed each ball of yarn to see how much of each kind I had used for the increase section because that is how much I will need for the decrease section.Then I just continued in the 8-row stripe repeat without shaping until I reached the weight needed to decrease.

Now I’ve started binding off 10 stitches at a time every other row, using the following stretchy-ish bind off: P2tog, slip stitch back on to left-hand needle; repeat.

I know that with the mohair content, this scarf will block out lovely… about 1 foot wide and 6 feet long. I’ll update the blog when it’s finished. The colour combination and the different texture is really doing all work to make this scarf a lovely accessory.