Notes for the hairpin lace scarf

Notes for the hairpin lace scarf

I knitted a strip with a tuck stitch pattern, eg A..........1.T.1.T.1..........A where T tucks for 3 rows and . is a needle out of work. Cast on with e-wrap. Knit about 230 rows, take off on waste yarn. Make 3 strips like this. Drop the stitches A. Using a crochet hook, latch up the loops, 4 at a time, to join the three strips. Sew the open stitches to the cast on edge and remove the waste yarn. Using the crochet hook, work 5 double crochets into the 4 edge loops, work a picot, work 5 double crochets, repeat until all loops crocheted up, slip stitch to start. Repeat for other edge, weave in ends.

FO: Machine-knitted hairpin lace snood

This won first prize in its category (Misc machine knit) at the annual Manor House competition - which I completely forgot about until this weekend. I couldv'e, probably should've, cast on some fancy socks (I finally got around to that about 9pm Tuesday night, but only got the fairisle bits done). It's machine-knitted hairpin lace, made from three strips, which are linked together, and then a bit of crochet around the edges. I'd probably call it an infinity scarf because I think it looks dorky on my head, but snood is just easier to say. It's some sort of brushed acrylic which I picked up from Uppinghams. I didn't think much to it - and I'd expected several more hairpin scarves at the competition - but mine was the only one. The receptionist at the community centre where we meet thought it was gorgeous, so I'm planning on making another for her as a thankyou for putting up with us barmy knitters. :) The strips have a central tucked stitch - you can program a card for this, but in practice just using hold is almost as quick and it actually seems to knit off more consistantly. Not yet pictured, my first attempt, which came out shorter and with lots of loops it shouldn't have had...

My lovely chiropractor says I just have a very tight left hamstring muscle and cycling should help, so I've an appointment with the exercise bike later. Glad to know it's nothing serious, it's just my body reluctantly readjusting itself. I've been taking an anti-inflammatory before bed, and wearing earplugs, so that's helping with the sleep. Now, if I could just convince Edhead the cat to stop plonking himself on me at 5am every morning, life'd be rosy!

Current mood: relaxed

Trying new techniques

Had to practice this, because I'm teaching it tonight:



Hairpin (top) and broomstick (bottom) crochet. Hairpin residing in the "why on earth I don't even" category for me - you can see I gradually got better at it as I progressed, thanks in no small part to the excellent video here by the folks at Bernat. It still seems a little fiddly to me - Victorian ladies with too much yarn and not enough things to do with it?

The broomstick went a little better, thanks to Sandra's three part video tutorial here. I automatically picked up the second row using the back loop only; I think it looks nicer.

There's also another sock on the go:



It's a bit shorter than that now because whilst I was struggling with broomstick and hairpin, the sofa was busily eating my poor sock, and I dropped a load of stitches and had to frog a few rounds back this morning when I realised what a pig's ear I'd made of picking them back up. Mental note: put project somewhere safe when starting something else. Also: There's usually a good reason why your stitch count is out, doofus!