I can’t believe I finally finished! It has been five years in the making!
This project evolved as I worked on it. I ended up just making a very long tube and fastening the ends together to make a loop. I did a three needle bind off on the wrong side until there were about four inches of width remaining, and then I grafted the remaining stitches. After blocking, it is a silky, luxurious double-layered cowl that is a pleasure to wear.
When I decided it would be a tube scarf or infinity cowl, I knew I’d want it long enough to loop twice around my neck. I realized one skein of WM Lace would not be enough, but this was a NiP skein so I didn’t want to just get a named skein in the same colorway. Instead I used semisolids in the colors of the multi. I started out making stripes, but then I added “bubbles” from Stephen West’s Bubble Cowl. I really like how the patterns and textures look together.
note: the “bubbles” make the fabric noticeably wider over the same number of stitches.
After blocking, it is 68 inches (173 cm) in circumference.
……………………
266 seems to be my magic number for 2 repeats. Way more than I expected! My gauge is pretty fine, so it isn’t enormous even with all these stitches.
I messed around with stitch count for a couple of hours. I started with a winding provisional cast on, going until I had two complete repeats of the color sequence. Then I worked back and forth in garter stitch to see if it would pool, and determined I needed quite a few more stitches. So I ripped it out and started over. This happened a few times, until I felt I had nailed the magic number. I cast on provisionally one more time (winding provisional) and the pooling seems to be going well (with some adjustments after every few rows). All this by way of avoiding the giant garter stitch triangle. It probably would have been faster to knit the triangle!
I used random increases and decreases in an attempt to keep the pooling under control, but after a while the yarn just wanted to stripe. I decided I was okay with wide zigzaggy stripes.
Schwarz 325g
Fuchsia 318g
Turkise Markie 330g
Golden Pear 315g
07-01-2017
Put this down for a while to finish a couple of other projects, but it’s back again.
Notice in the third wip photo that the yarn started to stripe. It looked like it wanted to continue striping, so I increased 4 stitches, and then a few rows later increased another 4. I actually want the piece to get wider at this point, so I’m happy about the increases. I hope it won’t need decreases at some point to keep pooling!
03-22-2021
picked this up again after almost 4 years just to have something to knit on in between projects. My original intention was to cut this open and knit wide borders on it to make a cardigan; now I think it may be simply a scarf. We’ll see what happens.
My gauge is noticeably looser now than in 2017. Changed to US2 needles.
03-25-2021
I’ve been working quite a lot of increases and decreases to keep it pooling, but it may be a hopeless case. I don’t actually mind wide zigzaggy stripes; we’ll see what happens.
03-28-2021
putting this down again to work on something else…but now I kinda want to finish it this year. I’ll leave it out of hibernation for now.
03-30-2021
275 sts in the marked round
12-12-2021
picked this up again while I’m between projects. It’s getting quite big!
12-17-2021
Finished the first skein!!! Added another, unrelated skein. It will be like 2 scarves in 1! Except I think I’m going to join the ends in a loop. We’ll see.
12-20-2021
Ripped out the four inches I’d worked in an unrelated multi and started over with stripes in Wichtelwaltzer colors. Much better.
12-25-2021
After about 6 inches of stripes, decided to add some “bubbles”.
07-29-2022
This poor project has been in and out of hibernation SO many times. Here I am, hauling it out again. Maybe this time we’ll get to the finish line?
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