Colorful silk and abaca

Scarf, mixed fibers, abaca and silk, size 3 double pointed needles, wood, 8 in.

This is a fabric worked with two yarns in seed stitch.  The yarns are worked in alternating rows throughout the length of the scarf. The abaca yarn produces the color variation in the fabric. It's about 8 inches wide and will be approximately 72 inches long.

One yarn is a solid red silk ribbon and the other is a wrapped variegated abaca fiber in pink, red, olive and black.

The fine gauge of the yarns and needles result in a huge amount of knitting in order to complete the rather large scarf 8x72 in.  Because the fibers are not wool, but more like linen or a very fine cotton, the scarf will be more suitable  as a fashion accessory rather than for warmth. The texture after just being knitted is somewhat like linen, meaning it will be a little stiff, and will soften the more the scarf is handled and cleaned. It will eventually drape beautifully like a well-worn linen or silk.

Current work

In the Studio - alternating rows

This Habu silk ribbon I recently picked up from Fabulous Yarns seemed like a good match to work with a Noro yarn made of abaca fiber that I got several years ago.

I like it!

Since I had a second color way of the Noro yarn I went back to Fabulous Yarns and picked up the red silk ribbon - it's another nice match.

I figured out that I could do the alternating rows technique in seed stitch that Christoffersson developed for garter stitch.  

If you click the "Look Inside" link for the book on the Amazon page, the pattern is the Two Colors Garter Stitch Four rows, #1. The blues and greens color way above is exactly that pattern.  The reds one is my seed stitch variation.  You don't have to cut the yarns, just keep alternating them each row.  I am trying this is about six different projects right now.  I'm obsessed with seeing how wonderful it is with different yarns.

Finished scarves

White scarf, wool, rib stitch; variegated scarf, abaca, seed stitch, both embellished with sequins

Both these scarves are finished as of today and will go with many others to Woodstock for sale in the Fleur de Lis Gallery there. I decided to sew each sequin individually to the front and back of each black patch in the abaca scarf, and it took time to knot the thread each time to begin the stitches and anchor the sequins into the scarf, then to knot it again after the sequins were attached. For the wool scarf I used a continuous thread and worked in a zig-zag path across the scarf, alternating from RS to WS. So I'd fasten a sequin on the RS, then take a very long stitch down through the knitting and end it on the WS of the scarf. Then I'd fasten a sequin onto the WS and take a long stitch and end it on the RS. This went much faster, but now there's a sewing thread that runs all through the wool knitting. This requires a careful selection of the sewing thread so that it is as invisible as possible. I found it easier to match the yarn with embroidery floss, because I have about a million colors of it.

I barely captured the sequins, but you can see there aren't too many of them. I'm convinced that on a lot of scarves, fewer sequins are better and they add interest because they're a little bit mysterious. The temptation at first was to put something that starkly contrasted with the white scarf, like black or hot pink. But I'm endeared to the "flash" effect, where the sequin starts to show up after flashing light, rather than being an obvious embellishment at first glance.

In the Studio

Scarf, variegated abaca, sequins, seed stitch

I think I finally was able to capture the glint of the sequins in this photo. They've been a source of real delight and experimentation. With this piece I put one black cup sequin on each side of the scarf within a patch of black stitches. It doesn't make sense to try to wind a thread through all the knitting between black patches, so I have made an individual loop of stitches for each pair of sequins, making sure that one will show on each side of the scarf. With seed stitch there's not an RS and WS. I had a passing urge to add hot pink sequins to the pink patches, but I've resisted. I'm not sure I'd recommend the abaca fiber due to its tendency to spring off the needles. It's more stiff than linen before it's washed, so very rascally to knit. I haven't washed it yet, but I've seen a swatch that's washed and it becomes beautifully soft. I knitted this with a size 9 needle, so there's a lot of knitting. The swatch I saw was knitted with a much larger needle, and although it was lacy, I didn't like the sparse look of it. This is still somewhat lacy, but more substantial. It'll look more like fabric than merely string, IMO. I can imagine this scarf being a smashing accent for a black outfit.