Confetti Scarf by MAR
HECK September, 2015
I took this to my mk guild for show
and tell. I introduced it by saying,
“You’re probably going to think I’m crazy….” when I was interrupted by a dear
but wonky friend who said, “Oh! That
boat has left already!” REALLY! We have a lot of fun in our guild mtgs, so I
didn’t take it toooooo seriously. This
was from a person who made a quilt that consisted of more than 10,000
pieces. So who’s cray cray now?
Here’s how I made the scarf. Take a really thin yarn that you maybe can’t
think of another use for and use it as your main yarn. I used a cone of Tamm Spirit, which I doubt
is made any more, as my main yarn. The
label says it’s 97% acrylic and 3% cotton.
I wonder why bother with the cotton since it’s such a minimal
amount. It looks and feels like a dress
yarn. Anyway, for the contrast yarns I
took snippets, about 6 to 9“ long of seven colors of other yarns and
doubled them. (I used red, turquoise,
blue, yellow, light green, purple and hot pink.) I had a lot of cone ends that needed to be
knit up. I randomly ewrapped these
snippets onto the needles in work. The
needles are pulled all the way out for the ewrapping. I left ½”
hanging on each end and hung onto the beginning end when I pulled the carriage across . No need to
tie a knot at the beginning and no need to work in these ends. Knitting with the thinnest yarn and a fairly
loose tension makes the fabric almost lacy looking.
Machine: any, but a midgauge or bulky seem to work
best. I used an LK150 midgauge.
Gauge:
doesn’t matter. I used T 3 since
the main yarn is so thin.
Yarn: as described in note above. The contrast colors were Tamm Sky, Mary Lou
Solo, mystery yarn, 7 colors. A fancy
novelty yarn would be fun to try too.
Skill
level:
very beginner
Finished
size:
for a scarf that is long enough to go around the neck and do some fancy
tying, about 14” wide and 7 feet long.
Measure as you knit. You could
also make a circle scarf by joining beginning to end. Twist or not. I seamed mine the long way so
that the fringes and purl side were the public side.
Directions:
Ewrap on the number of stitches you need to get the
width. Mine was 60 stitches wide on the
midgauge. Choose a tension that knits
smoothly with your yarn. Add weight
evenly distributed. Knit 10 rows. Grab one of your snippets, pull out some
needles and ewrap the snippet doubled on as many needles as it will
cover, right on top of main yarn. If you
pull out too many needles for the length of your snippet, just leave them. Since you aren’t doing patterning, they will
just knit. If you didn’t pull out enough
needles, pull out some more. Knit 2 to 4
plain rows (or more as you wish) with the main yarn. I knit different number of rows randomly
too. Add other snippets randomly
color-wise and placement- wise across the needle bed---- as many as you wish
across the row. Don’t forget to move the
weights up every 20 rows or so. Repeat
until the scarf is long enough. The more
snippets you add, the longer it will take to complete the scarf, but the more
colorful it will be. If your snippets
are made of fatter yarn, you may not need to double it.
I laid out my snippets on the chair beside me so
that I could make the color scheme look random.
I didn’t want too many sections of the same color. You will need a lot of them. Trim ends so that they are basically the same
length. Steam the scarf to control the edges if you’re not seaming. It’s kinda fun to make and definitely
different.
The yarn I used: main and fringes
