Hand Knit Baktus Scarf with Edging

I love knitting this scarf. It looks great and is easy to knit. Years ago I bought a skein of variegated purple wool yarn when I went to the annual Taos Wool Festival in Taos, New Mexico. I wanted to find the right project for this yarn, since it was just one skein and fingering weight. I finally decided this scarf was the right project to knit and since I had knit this scarf years ago and liked it, I knew it would turn out right.

The actual name of this scarf is called Crest of the Wave by Jan Henley. The pattern is free on Ravelry, just click on the link.

The colors are so much prettier in person as purple doesn't photograph true (at least not in my camera). The colors are really a deep eggplant that variegates to a red plum and has touches of lavender too. The photo looks more blue, but it is not at all.

I love the look of the edging too. This is all garter stitch knit, but having the edging adds a nicer look to the scarf.

Not having a model to photograph this scarf makes it kind of hard to see how it looks worn. I love how soft and warm it feels when I do wear it.

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Scrappy Sock Yarn Knit Hat

I knit this hat using up my leftover sock weight yarn. It's a fun scrappy looking hat. The hat came out a bit too large, so I donated this one to the library's Giving Tree too.  

I kind of like the scrappy look of this hat, so I might make another one, but knit in  a smaller size. The hat would have a different look each time it was made, depending on the yarn colors that were used.

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Close to You Hand Knit Scarf #3 in Blue-Green Variegated Yarn

I love knitting this scarf. This is the 3rd one I have knit. It uses fingering weight yarn and looks great in so many colors and types of yarn. The first one I knit was an alpaca/wool blend in a soft variegated pastel blue-violet colors. Then I knit a solid pink 100% alpaca one and this one is a wool/acrylic blend. 

On the first one I knit, I followed the picot bind off, but the last 2 I did a regular bind off without the picot edge. It was much easier and I personally didn't think the picot added anything to the scarf. This is a free pattern if you want to knit your own scarf. You can find the pattern here on Ravelry.

I am starting a different knit scarf tonight. I just finished a hat knit with cables last night. Happy Knitting and keep warm.
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Giant Square Scrap Knit Blanket in Sock Yarn

I had lots of leftover bits of sock yarn piling up and so I wanted to knit something to use up all the bits and bobs I had and I found this knit blanket pattern and decided to use up sock yarn by knitting this square mitered blanket. 

The blanket is knit in the round starting in the center and continuing outward until you reach the desired size that you want. Increases are made every other round. I didn't have a long enough circular needle, so I knit this on 2 circular needles like I knit socks using 2 circular needles, which make to easy to knit. But by knitting on 2 circular needles it made it impossible to see how this large this blanket was getting. I would measure it from one corner to the center and double the number I got to visualize how large it was getting, but even so I wasn't quite sure when to stop knitting. The larger the blanket got the more yarn I needed. Some of those outer stripes were nearly a full skein of yarn just to knit about an inch of stripe. This was beginning to defeat the purpose of using up smaller bits of sock yarn. So I decided I would end knitting this blanket when it got to about 50" square.

Most of the sock yarn is a self patterning yarn making strips it other patterns as I knit, I also had a few solid colors of yarn. Since sock weight (also call fingering weight) yarn is so fine and narrow, it took me about 4 months just to knit this and I knit it from 2-4 hours each evening while I watched a movie or show on Netflix or Amazon. I might make another blanket like this in the future, but I will use my worsted weight or heavier yarns to knit it so it knits up quicker is thicker and warmer. While I love the drape the sock yarn has, it's not as warm as a thicker yarn would be.

This blanket is called, Giant Square Scrap Blanket, by Laura Peters. It is a free pattern on Ravelry.

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Close to You Handknit Scarf/Shawl

I love knitting in the evenings while I watch a movie or two or a few episodes of a series on Netflix or Amazon. I usually knit 2-4 hours each evening. I didn't keep exact track of the time it took to knit this, but it did take me somewhere around 4-6 weeks to complete it. So I am guessing it was about 100-150 hours of knitting or more! Knitting is truly a labor of love! With bag making, the cost of the materials to a make a bag might be about the same as the cost of yarn to knit something like this scarf/shawl (or even more because good yarn isn't cheap), but it certainly takes a whole lot longer to knit anything than to make a bag.

I don't consider myself a slow knitter, but my friend knits so fast my head spins, lol!!! I sent my friend the link to this knit pattern and less than a week later she had it knit and blocked, and she works 12-14 hour shifts working with Covid positive patients! I asked her if she knit 20 hours a day on her off days and she thought I was joking, but really I don't know how she knits so fast and I knew she did, but I thought with working so much now that it would be quite a while before she finished this scarf/shawl.

It's hard to photograph scarves and shawls. So I tried showing this several ways.

Garter stitch and lace knitting with a picot bound off edge.

This is fingering weight yarn, which is the second lightest and narrowest yarn besides lace weight being the lightest yarn. So the lighter the yarn, the smaller the needles, the longer it takes to knit.

Tried taking a pic of me wearing it looking into a mirror, so not the greatest photo, but you can see how you can wear as a scarf.

I took this photo inside by a window, so the colors look washed out.

If you are a knitter this is a free pdf. If you aren't a knitter and want someone to knit this for you, expect to pay a lot! Even getting paid $1 an hour, labor alone would amount to $100-$150 or more (unless you can find someone like my fast knitting friend, lol, then maybe it would be less) and that doesn't include the approximately $30 for the cost of yarn. So if you paid someone just minimum wage to knit this, it would cost you thousands of dollars! I hope that gives you all an appreciation of knitters and those who crochet too. So when you buy something that is handknit, you know that you are getting something that is a labor of love and even if they use the cheapest yarn available, their labor is worth far more than they are charging for what they make.

Happy knitting!

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