Tiffany Epiphany

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Now that my godchild has grown out of her baby scarf, her parents asked me for a larger one. As she is a very special little person, I decided to knit her a very special scarf, namely a child sized Tiffany Epiphany. To downsize the pattern, I have followed the smaller size and knit only four segments. With a finished length of about 160cm, my plan has failed quite a bit. Nonetheless, it should work out fine as the scarf is knit in fingering weight yarn and thus can be looped around the neck once more without adding too much warmth.

The pattern is well written with a lot of photos guiding you through less usual techniques. The scarf is knit modularly in garter stitch with minimal finishing. I liked to watch the shapes evolve while knitting although I have to admit that this is not a mindless knit. There is a lot of short row shaping involved and you may want to count your stitches every other row to make sure the shaping is correct.

I have used 20g blue Schoppel Wolle Admiral and 34g grey Zauberwiese Supertwist Falkland Nylon from my leftovers stash, 74g Hedgehog Fibres Skinny Singles in wibble, a Fibreshare gift, and 63g pink Schoppel Wolle Admiral Hanf, a new sock yarn with bio-degradable nylon which I got for free at Yarncamp 2019. Thanks to garter stitch, the four different yarn textures blend well into each other. A nice surprise was the Admiral Hanf yarn, whose 10% hemp content adds an interesting structure. Sadly, this is more or less invisible in garter stitch, but very classy in stockinette stitch. I definitely need to experiment more with it. Now let’s hope my godchild likes her new, colourful scarf and enjoys wearing it!

Oscillating Almond

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It is no secret that I love the fresh approach of Xandy Peters‘ knitting patterns. So when a dear friend asked me to knit her something between a scarf and a shawl, I initially thought of Oscillating Almond. This design uses a simple form of stacked stitches to create an almond shaped shawl and can be used to practise the technique. It is intended to be knit in at least one main colour plus one contrasting colour, but will also look good in a lot more colours. I have used two balls of the discontinued Colinette Jitterbug in Lichen as main colour and one ball of some sparkling high twist yarn of unknown origin as well as some Kathienchen High Twist in Peony as contrasting colours.

The yarns

My version is a lot larger than the pattern version as I wanted to use up my main colour. This approach resulted in a shawl with five full pattern repeats plus eight rows more. It weighs about 380g and has almost blanket size.

It’s HUGE!

Well aware of the large size, I did a beaded picot bind-off over 940 stitches which took me an entire Sunday afternoon and evening, but was totally worth the effort. I really like the slight reflections of the beads at the edge.

Beaded picot bind-off

Oscillating Almond was a pleasure to knit. The pattern is well-written and easy to follow and my yarn choice was perfect. Maybe I’ll knit another version of it one day in black with scrappy colour pops.

A linen stitch scarf

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Once again, my huge yarn stash was driving me crazy, when a friend asked me to knit him a scarf. I found three balls of dark grey, DK weight alpaca yarn and some colourful DK weight merino scraps. To add some extra spice, I decided to knit the scarf in linen stitch. I loosely followed the Cerus Scarf pattern, but I cast on 445 stitches and added one colour row after two grey ones. The idea of adding fringe was partly due to omitting sewing in a gazillion of lose ends, partly due to achieving softer edges. The result is 2.10 m long (without the fringe) and 15 cm wide after 37 rows.

The Flexibly Sized Baby Scarf

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When I recently was asked to knit a baby scarf, I instantly wanted to implement an option to adapt the size to the growing child. Of course, this actually is not a challenge, unless you plan to knit some fashion-forward design. While I still was thinking over several design ideas, Knitty’s winter issue was published, including the gorgeous Erin Goes to College pattern. With its superbulky yarn weight and enormous length, it is far from intentionally being a baby scarf, but it includes all features I was looking for. It is fashionable, can be secured around the neck and, with its many holes, is adaptable in its length!

Deep down in my stash, I found a single skein of blue Drachenwolle Merino DK, begging to be turned into this scarf. I have sticked exactly to the pattern, just using DK weight yarn and 3.5mm needles and knitting only five large cable repeats. Perfect choice. The pattern is well written, but pretty boring to knit. Nonetheless, I absolutely recommend to try it. The yarn is soft and the colour is beautifully shaded, but it reminds me a bit too much of cotton softness (I am talking about the same problem I have with Wollmeise yarns, here). However, the scarf turned out even better than imagined and the parents are super happy.