Tag: yarn

Finished Object – Waterfall Scarf

Leave a comment
A green, blue, orange, and red knit scarf with dropped stitch details draped around the neck of a green, adjustable dress form.

And here is the first finished object of 2023 – a Waterfall Scarf. I found this pattern in my 101 Designer One-Skein Wonders book, and it is designed by Linda O’Leary.

A green, orange, red, and blue knit scarf with dropped stitch details hanging over a white door.

Despite it being from a book specifically designed for projects that use a single skein of yarn, I still bought 2 of the Caron Cotton Cakes to make sure I had enough yarn. Obviously it was not only enough, but probably enough for 5 of these. I’m turning the rest into a hat… or two (or three).

Close up of a blue section of the scarf to show the detail of the knit stitches.

Since the details are created by lines of dropped stitches, it made for a quick knit because it was just knitting every row. Even though it didn’t really, dropping the stitches at the end almost felt like it took as along as the knitting.

Full Details:

-Yarn: 120 grams of Caron Cotton Cakes in Peach Blossom

-Needle: Size US10 (6mm)

-Finished dimensions: 6 inches wide, 101 inches long

Find me on Ko-Fi, Instagram, and Ribblr.

Choosing Colors

Leave a comment

A tip for choosing colors, especially colors for stripes or other types of patterns, that I learned in either my color theory class or my first photoshop class: take a picture and desaturate it to black and white.

Five skeins of neon yarn on a light wooden table: blue, pink, green, magenta, and purple from left to right. A speckled black skein sit above them.
Black and white version of the photo above with five skeins of yarn lined up with a sixth, smaller skein above them. The five skeins of yarn are in order of medium, medium, light, dark, dark

A bit easier to do now than it was back then when it involved actually getting out a digital camera, taking a picture, importing it to photoshop, and then changing the color. And I acknowledge that I was lucky to be able to do that a bit over a decade ago. Imagine that same process with black and white film and having to either develop it or take it to Walgreens. Yeah, pretty sure no one would do that.

Five skeins of neon yarn on a light wooden table: blue, magenta, pink, purple, and magenta from left to right. A speckled black skein sit above them.
Black and white version of the photo above with five skeins of yarn lined up with a sixth, smaller skein above them. The five skeins of yarn are in order of dark, dark, medium, dark, light

I was able to make each of these pictures in a matter of seconds right on my phone, and it makes all the difference. This shows you which ones are similar tones and can help you get whatever effect you are going for.

Five skeins of neon yarn on a light wooden table: purple, pink, magenta, green, and blue from left to right. A speckled black skein sit above them.
Black and white version of the photo above with five skeins of yarn lined up with a sixth, smaller skein above them. The five skeins of yarn are in order of dark, medium, dark, light, dark

I wanted contrast in my stripes, so I chose this order. If I had wanted more of a gradient, even with the bright colors, I could’ve rearranged the first group to pull the lightest out of the center and place it to the end.

Find me on Ko-Fi, Instagram, and Ribblr.

Spinning Quite a Yarn

Leave a comment

I was super excited when Lauren McElroy’s Crafter’s Box collaboration was announced. I love her Instagram content and have always been interested in learning to use a drop spindle, so it was a perfect box to spend some birthday money on.

There was a small bit of a learning curve, as you can see from the progression in that photo, but the video class was so easy to follow. I even started incorporating some color with some roving from Ganxxet.

Once I had a good amount of two-ply yarn, I wanted to create a project with it. I swatched a bit in crochet and knitting to decide which looked better. The crochet showed off the variation in the thickness (which we will pretend was intentional), so I started a hat.

The yarns I used were about 4-5 WPI, and I roughly measured the smallest amount to find out that I had about 6.9 yards per 10 grams. This hat used 58 grams of the all-white yarn and 41 grams of the blue/purple/white yarn. Really rough estimates mean that I used around 68.31 yards in total.

I’ve also started experimenting with chain plying the yarn (the two small skeins in this picture), which is a lot of fun. I don’t have enough of it yet to do much with it, but I’m thinking maybe gloves.

If you are looking to learn drop spindle spinning, I’d definitely recommend this kit. It’s still available through The Crafter’s Box Marketplace, and they have some accessories you can also pick up through the marketplace to create even more yarns.

Find me on Ko-Fi, Instagram, and Ribblr.