Summer Knitting: The Bandana Scarf

Hey Hey :o),

How's everyone summer's been going... or I guess winter if you're rocking the southern hemisphere. Soooo personally my sewing efficiency has been way down as of late, but you know what?  I thought about it and aside from two projects that have been a wee bit harder than I expected, I chock it up to the fact that it's been hard to stay inside sewing, when there are only a  couple warm months every year.  So yea, I have been spending this summer getting out as much as possible and doing a little bit of traveling so I'm not going to let myself get down about my lower productivity.

However, another thing I discovered this summer was that knitting is the best for traveling.  Way better than sewing... that was probably really obvious but you know whateves, sometimes it takes a slap of obvious to get me trying something new so I thought I would share my findings in case you were curious. So, with that as an intro, this is my latest greatest.  Summer time knitting:

Every fourth of July my whole immediate family goes up to Jericho VT, to hang out with each other and some dear family friends.  We've been going up since I was in third grade and I have all the heart eyes for this reunion every year. This year we decided to go up a little early and visit some other dear friends of ours that live in Maine and also make a pit stop in NH to get some outdoor climbing in.  The trip was awesome in all the ways I anticipated and then was made even better by the fact that we discovered "The Yarn Seller", which is the cutest little yarn store literally 10 minutes away from our friends in Maine.  They have a billion different kinds and brands of yarn (at least to me, though I'm no expert), some that were even locally spun and dyed. However the best part of The Yarn Seller was that they gave you free pattern with every yarn purchase.  

Knowing that these patterns were probably free (in fact I think this one is on Ravely), I thought this was such a great business model. Honestly, as someone who is still mostly a knitting n00b, I thought it was awesome, that as the seller, they would help me match up a good project for my skill set and expectations, but also one that would be good for the yarn that I liked.  Additionally there were little partially knit samples all over the counters showing the different yarn and pattern combos.  It gave me tons of knit-spiration.  Anyways if you're interested here's a link to the place, and in case you're wondering, no this is not a paid plug or anything (I wish), just a tip about a place I really liked. 

The pattern is called the Baktus, and again it's free on Ravely if you're interested.  It's a simple bandana scarf which you basically just start with 4 stitches and then increase by 1 stitch every 4th row.  Then when you get to the halfway point of your yarn you decrease by one stitch every 4th row. Easy peasy. The hardest part is guesstimating when you are halfway through your yarn. The lady at The Yarn Seller suggested I buy a kitchen scale and measure my halfway point by weight, but I knit just about all of this in a car or on a plane and well, just never got around to buying a scale.  Luckily I did an OK job guesstimating and have just the tiniest amount left over of each of the two yarns I used.

Did you realize that this was two different colors/kinds of yarn?  One was a straight grey and the other was variegated grey, blue, black, different grey different blue, etc. I totally stole the idea from one of the samples in the store. They did the same thing with the same variegated yarn, but paired it with a lighter grey.  However this scarf is just a simple garter stitch and the sample in the store was a basket weave.  Full disclosure... I totally wanted to copy that basket weave as well, but figuring it out with the triangular shape was too much thinking for a summer travel project.  Wish I had the yarn labels handy to let you know exactly what yarn it is, but unfortunately I think they went through the wash.  The yarn is awesome though ;o).  OK, here's one last picture of Aminta looking longingly out the window wishing for less humidity (poetic, I know) because it's still too hot for me to wear it. Thanks Aminty! 

Until next time.

~Kten