First Steven West pattern - I’ve really been wanting to try something of his for ages. Something scarfy should get a fair bit of wear whether it ends up being for me or someone else in the family.

I’ve been drooling over the speckled yarns I’ve been seeing lately and would love to get some, but, alas, finances won’t stretch that far. Then I had the idea to use some of my naturally dyed yarns … I could add some speckles! Then I could feel like I was participating in the “speckled fade along” that Steven West is doing - yay! Plus, I get to play with dye again!!!!!!

Stash diving …

The colour pop choices are many and varied - I want to include the two fluoro Knit Picks colours, maybe my hand-dyed teal wool/silk, maybe some navy, maybe some other scraps.

The natural dye yarns were more difficult to choose. I’m going with my skein of Meilenweit seta/cashmere that was dyed in my Tree Memorial chunky bark dye project as my darkest colour. The next lightest is what I think is fingering baby alpaca/silk by Yarnundyed that I hot process dyed using red camellia buds. The middle of the range colour I think is Manos Lace, cold process dyed in my chunky bark dye. The second lightest skein is what I think is Yarnundyed 4ply Baby Alpaca that was cold process dyed in eucalyptus leaves. The lightest skein is Wool2Dye4 Merino superwash sport that was dyed in the exhaust of my Pink Tea project (hot processed, maybe). Now to add some speckles …

Not sure whether the speckles will look ok when knit, but all I can do is try.

Also decided to use a navy 2/28 cashmere from ColourMart and a Lincraft yellowish green for colour pops.

I will start with the navy b/c dark ends tend to wear better over time.

The sunset-coloured yarn is from an Ixchel bunny miniskein - bamboo bunny base, Sunny Day (I think) …

Part 4 started immediately after the second grass green stripe (which contains an accidental new design element - I forgot to purl back across so the stripe is in garter not stst). Oh, and part 2 is longer than it is meant to be b/c I lost access to the pattern temporarily but still felt like knitting, so I just kept going for a while.

I’ve started fading in my second background yarn. I was worried that there wouldn’t be enough of a contrast between it and the first yarn b/c they are pretty similar. However, there is a good textural contrast and the speckles on the second yarn have turned out muted purple and blue (even though it is the same dye mix) and the background is somewhat creamier, so I’m quite happy with it so far …

Part 5 ends with a four row grass green stripe …

First stripe in section 6 is another Ixchel Bunny miniskein on her bamboo bunny base, Grimm. After that, there is a stripe of the Navy laceweight Colourmart cashmere, then another Ixchel Bunny miniskein (bamboo, bunny, silk, nylon base) in Coral.

I’ve decided to do an extra section in the second background colour before fading it into the third because I have enough of that yarn but my darkest colour is only a small skein, so I won’t have to make the FO shorter. I might do the same with the third colour and/or fourth colour, too …

Section 8 finished with a soft, light green cotton.

… So, I have finished the knitting (sort of) and, unstretched, it is roughly 280cm/9ft long! Both ends just touch the ground if I drape it around my neck (hehe)! A bit too long given that it will grow with blocking. I have decided that the first two yarns are not sufficiently different to contribute to the fade effect (which I absolutely love), so I am going to undo the sections with the first yarn and make the second yarn the beginning. This will mean reknitting a bit because of the section where the two yarns are faded together will have to be undone as well.

Ultimate unblocked length is ~245cm/8ft. It no longer touches the ground if it is draped around my neck : ) Some of the last photos show how I took off the first part and reknitted the beginning ( I will add more notes on this later). I added some silly photos of me modelling the unblocked finished item (without the ends woven in)

Final blocked measurements: back to ~280cm/9ft long, the narrow end is about 48cm/1.5ft wide and the wide end about 84cm/2.75ft.
……………………..
Thoughts
I really enjoyed knitting this! I actually participated a little bit in the Westknits Fadealong group whilst knitting. I’ve not done lace b/f, so it was good to do a project of basic feather and fan and to experience how Stephen added the increases in the pattern. I think if I were to write up a pattern in feather and fan and wanted to do increases/decreases I would probably chart it out and figure out how many stitches need changing and make sure that each feather/fan was still symmetrical and even. Mathematical …

For some reason my attitude during this was a bit different. I didn’t worry too much about mistakes and very rarely went back and corrected anything. It was not unusual for me to get to the end of a pattern row and realise I was a stitch out, so I just compensated rather than going back and trying to find where the mistake was (which is difficult in lace, with yarn overs and k2togs etc) and correcting, reknitting etc. I guess it was probably b/c I just wanted to be knitting and the final product wasn’t earmarked for anyone else, and it was all a bit of an experiment in using up some of my stash yarn. Quite gratifying and enjoyable, overall!

I also didn’t worry much about gauge. The yarns varied quite a bit in weight so I just compensated by knitting loosely with the lighter gauges and more tightly with the heavier gauges (I couldn’t be bothered hunting out and trying different needles for different yarns). Overall, I think my gauge probably has turned out looser than called for, but I like it and there are no disasters. It is good to practice varying tension - at least, that is what I told myself - and not fussing about getting things right meant I enjoyed the knitting more, I think!

I was worried about how I was going to block this. I didn’t own any blocking wires. Happily, we’ve had a partial role of galvanised wire sitting in the carport for very many years that was just begging to be used. I snipped it into lengths about the size of my arm with some wire snips, making it as straight as I could as I went. The problem then was the sharp ends. The answer was nail polish! Several coats of nail polish on every tip, allowing it to slightly bead on the end, seems to have fixed the problem. And now the ends are hot pink : ) I’m expecting the nail polish to be quite long lasting, given what it will be used for …
Modifications

Lots of accidental extra design elements (= mistakes) but you can’t really tell by a quick glance. The most obvious is the fact that there are about three stripes that are in garter rather than stst b/c I forgot to purl on the way back - oh well!

I mentioned above that section 2 is longer than intended, but that section was removed in my big modification of removing the sections that involved the first yarn. I did this b/c the FO was ginormously long initially and there wasn’t a sufficient difference b/w yarns one and two for the fade/gradient effect to be apparent. Initially, in my lace ignorance, I had thought that I would just knit back in the other direction to refinish that end. After having a good think, though, I realised that this would not work b/c the yos form the hills and the k2togs form the valleys when knitting in the original direction. When you turn it up the other way, the hills will become valleys and vice versa! This would mean that you would have to knit yos where there were k2togs previously and k2togs where there were yos in order to preserve the hills and valleys - obviously, this would look very different! So I decided I would just cast on and knit up in the original direction then graft them together (after placing lifelines b/f the first and after the last row of the sections where yarns one and two are faded together - this meant I could keep the bit I had already knit and maybe make a cowl later, then unravelling those sections and rewinding the yarns.) The original cast on was a bit fiddly for me, so I decided to do a JMCO using one strand of the icord colour and one of the yarn I was reknitting, then come back and create the icord using the same bind off as at the far end (worked a treat, and matches!). My logic for the cast on number was a bit wrong so I cast on the number of stitches for the first of the fading sections and ended up doing only four goes through the four row pattern repeat for each of the three fading sections rather than the original nine that was called for. What I should have done was cast on the number for half way through the second section of the fade, done four repeats, then do a full go through the third section of the fade. Doesn’t matter! I was also able to reuse some of the colour pop yarn pieces.

Another modification is that what was originally the second yarn went for one extra section b/f fading into the next colour b/c I seemed to have enough of that yarn but my last colour was only a small ball so the last fade and last plain sections are smaller than called for.

yarn

pattern

photos
The first two photos are of the garment blocking
Then the next photos are my attempt to show how the different yarn sections turned out, along with their “fades” and their speckles, during blocking
After that is a mixture of the unblocked item laid out and me being silly wearing it (there don’t seem to be many photos on Ravelry of this item being worn)
Then a series of WIP photos in approx reverse order
A photo of the original fade yarns and a couple of colour pop yarns
A photo of my fade yarns after I applied some speckles
Three photos of a ladybug friend who came to help me knit one day
Some photos of the surgery I performed to amputate the first yarn and reconstruct the beginning
The last photo is the nail polish drying on the ends of my newly manufactured blocking wires

Things Learned

For Next Time