In February 2009, I cast on a scarf project. It was my first ever knitting project that wasn’t meant solely for practice. In the ten weeks prior to this particular cast on, I had practiced with a hideousy misshapen green not-so-square that reminded me of the blob of food in the film Better Off Dead (skip to 4:19 HERE to see what I mean). I was still learning how to knit consistently and was increasing, decreasing, and doing short rows accidentally right and left. We’ve all been there. So, when I purchased the skeins of Kilcarra Irish Tweed and cast on this particular project, I was embarking on real knitting.
The project had no pattern, just a striping feature to soften the yellow and brighten the grey. I used circular knitting needles since I was working from two balls and sometimes it wasn’t knitting straight back and forth, but sliding the knitting back to the other needle to knit from the other side. Because the knitting and sliding motion of creating it reminds me of my old manual typewriter and the carriage return, I named it such. Hence the name… The Carriage Return Cowl. If I wasn’t into typewriters, it would have been named after corn on the cob because the yellow stitches resemble the roundness of corn kernels. But I think of corn as a summer or late spring thing to eat so a wool scarf would mess with that image anyway. Yes, I know I’ve given this WAY too much thought.
Throughout the 5.5 years I knit this project, I jotted down my thoughts since it was my first real knitting project, I wanted to preserve how it felt to create something not blobby. Here are my notes:
8 January 2009: I bought a few skeins of Kilcarra Aran Tweed to for Sturdy Mama and picked up two for me as well in yellow and gray (one each). I couldn’t resist and want to make something striped with them. I still have not grasped the concept of how many skeins it takes to make a scarf versus a sweater or even how to tell the weight and length of a skein without a label, but that will come in time I suppose.
23 February 2009: I cast on 50 stitches to make myself a scarf. With the help of a friend in my new knitting group, I am starting a striped scarf with the lovely Kilcarra Aran Tweed. I am so lucky to be knitting with yarn geniuses. The project will be knitting on 4mm circulars so the striping can be done simply be knitting and sliding and knitting and sliding and so on. I feel like I just got the training wheels taken off my bicycle!!
1 March 2009: There are more than 50 stitches on my needles. Elizabeth Zimmerman’s Knitting Glossary is very helpful in understanding some of the mechanics of stitches and how to decrease in a few different ways. I am still trying to comprehend the differences, but at least I know more than before. I loaded it on my iPhone and scrolled to the right section to find out how to decrease stitches on my scarf. Yup, I resorted to my old ‘increasing’ ways again. I started with 50 stitches and I want to keep it that way since this is a real project. It is sooooo wonderful to have a little knitting help handy when I want to learn more or fix a problem and since each demonstration is mere minutes it is nice to do while waiting in a queue or such. There is also a nicely done video on YouTube – The Knit Witch shows how to decrease stitches using SSK (Slip, Slip, Knit).
6 March 2009: Even though I am knitting barely any faster on this than on the green monster practice blob, it feels like I am making more progress. The neat part of it is that I can set little goals for myself with the stripes. For instance, I will knit two rows here and two rows there. I’ll admit that it also helps me keep track of my rows because sometimes in my previous project I would set it down in the middle and forget which direction I was knitting because it was all the same green hue. Definitely a positive project.
19 March 2009: My scarf is starting to look more and more like an actual scarf. It is satisfying to make something and have it become that thing. I know that doesn’t always happen, like in cooking what I try to bake doesn’t always come out how it looks in the photo, but with care and skill what you knit can look like it’s supposed to. That’s downright exciting!
Summer 2010: I bought the necessary yarn and it is still carried at the local yarn shop if I need more (lot numbers won’t matter because the striping distracts from minor color differences).
24 January 2011: I will probably give this scarf as a gift because I started it before my sensitivity to wool came back.
The notes stopped after that, but I kept working on this project bit-by-bit.
Eventually, the project was relegated to social knitting since it was mindless then it became a winter project. Finally, after five years I was ready to finish it once and for all. But by then I realised scarves were cumbersome when chasing my son so I decided to make it a cowl. Which, as a bonus, meant I didn’t need to keep knitting the seemingly never-ending scarf.
I bound it off and stitched the two ends together to create the cowl it now is. What a fun project it was. I’m now thinking I’ll sew a coordinating piece of flannel to the inside where it lies against my neck to make it super soft to wear. But this is how it looks right now…
As a side note, you can also see the evolution of my project photography throughout these past nearly six years. I embraced natural light, I bought a MUCH better camera, and I realised that straight on isn’t always the best way to see detail. But perhaps I should do an entire post about photographing and styling craft and knitting projects. Here’s a comparison of what a few years experience and better equipment can do for photography. Both photos were taken in the EXACT same window ledge in my current home.
2009
2014
Is there a project you started with one plan and finished it as something else?
It makes a lovely cowl, I think it would have been too heavy as a scarf so you made the right choice 🙂