knitting in the dark

I ordered yarn for the Henry scarf in the new Knitty – a half-pound cone of Louet Gems Fingering in Indigo.

It is a gorgeous blue the color of a twilight sky and I’ve spent almost a week now swatching it.

I don’t generally spend a lot of time with swatches so who’d have guessed that I’d spend a week swatching for a scarf!?! The thing is: Louet doesn’t have a lot of stretch and I want to make sure I find the proper balance of being close to the pattern gauge (it’s knit from side to side and therefore you cast on A LOT of stitches) and creating a dense, sturdy-looking fabric – it is a scarf for a boy after all (and no mom, not a boyfriend).

I think I’ve found the proper needle sizes (3.25 and 4mm, which feel giant compared to my 2mm sock needles), but I have to go buy longer circular needles in those sizes as I’ve been testing on straights and now find I don’t have circulars in the desired sizes.

I hope to be done by the end of the month as I plan on giving it as a birthday present November 7^th; good thing I’m mostly done with Christmas presents already…!

This entry was posted on Friday, October 5th, 2007 at 8:58 pm and is filed under knitting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.