Month: December 2018

I’m still singing it and it is a good song. I was not able to finish the scarf while my dad was still with me. I was sitting with him, crocheting on this scarf, when he embarked on his final journey. His was a peaceful end even though the journey there wasn’t always so. I am thankful for the time we shared and I will most definitely remember him when I wear this scarf.

As you can see in the photo,  the ending section is all in solid grey. Most of the scarf is made from two skeins of Nako Arya Ebruli yarn; one in grey and blacks, the other in shades of pink. My first thought was to just stop crocheting when he passed,  wherever that might have been but Karla suggested finishing in a different color. So, when I picked it up to finish it a couple of days ago, I dropped the pink and just continued the last 18″ in the grey, made a border on one side and then the tassels; again, all in the grey.

Why did I choose this particular project in this particular yarn? To answer that, I need to tell you another story.

Last year, I went to Vegas, got off the plane and dragged my friend Robin straight to Sin City Knit Shop. I had of course looked up yarn shops in LV before we left. The owners at SCKS dye their own yarn and give it names like “Roll the Dice”, “Lucky Tokens”, “Megabucks” and “Vegas Lite”. How fun is that?! I knew I had to have some. They also carry other local yarns.  Amongst the skeins that jumped into my bag, I brought home the yarn pictured below…Roll the Dice…in pinks and purples (of course).

I had taken the pattern I wanted to make with me, the Nituna Shawl that I purchased at Annie’s catalog.com. The yarns I fell in love with for this project at SCYS, were DK weight(No 3), not Sport weight (No 2) as was specified in the pattern. In yarn terms, Sport weight is lighter/smaller in diameter than DK weight. For you non-yarn folks, I’m sorry but this turned out to be important. We returned home after a fun trip and at some point that fall I made the shawl/scarf. Pattern says it will be 66″ long and 15″ wide at the mid point.

Mine is 110″ long by 13″ at the midpoint. Hmmmm. Not unhappy though. Actually really happy as I can wrap it multiple times, wear it backwards, forwards, as a shawl, as a scarf… Hopefully you get the idea. It’s got heft too. And it’s soft. And purple although the pink pops more in this photo but I’m ok with that since it’s in-your-face fuchsia, not pastel.

But. I did start wondering what it would be like if I used the yarn the pattern called for. Would it crochet up to the correct dimensions? There’s that whole pattern/stitch gauge thing. But really, I wanted to see just how much difference the yarn makes.

Here’s the two of them next to each other. The one I just finished is 72″ long and 13.5″ at it’s widest point. And check this out. The LV shawl weighs in at 339 grams while the Memory shawl is only 132 grams. Wow.

So, to sum up, does the yarn weight really matter? Is gauge really important? And the answer is: It depends. Just how much you adhere to these isn’t so important on something like a shawl/scarf but hugely important if you are making a garment!

All for now, I need to crochet!

Oh wait, it’s supposed to be Sentimental Journey...like the song. If you don’t know it, you’re not old enough. It starts out, “Gonna take a sentimental journey, gonna set my heart at ease, gonna take a sentimental journey to re-new old memories” I hope your singing along. 

Sometimes the yarn isn’t the special part, it’s what you do with it that makes it so. Last post I talked about the scarf I am crocheting while with my dad. It’s almost done.

This is the blanket I gave him for Christmas last year. He hasn’t always shown an interest in the projects I work on, in fact this may have been the first one. I started it during the Thanksgiving weekend. We watched football and a movie or two at our house and I worked on this project. The yarn is acrylic from Red Heart (a big yarn company for those of you who don’t yarn). There are lots of different colors to use and the pattern is interesting to work due to the changes in colors and in the stitches. 

I could see him watching out of the corner of his eye so I took it closer for him to see. His comments ranged from “looks like a lot of work”, to “that will take a long time”, to “what are you going to do with it?” and variations of those three. The last became a frequent query. After the third or maybe fourth time he asked, I responded that it would be a Christmas gift.

I hadn’t really decided what to do with the blanket after it was finished but by that point it occurred to me that perhaps it would be for him. We had that particular query/response exchange many times during the weekend but never once did he ask for whom it would be a gift. I would have told him if he had. Maybe he knew that.