And So It Begins...

Hello Knitting World!  Though I've been knitting for a few years now, I'm still very much a neophyte.  Like many, I started out with scarves, but immediately decided to jump into larger items, such as afghans and baby blankets.  Now I spend my time challenging myself to create something new and different.  Luckily for me my friends have been helping me with that, by asking me the "can you make this?" question. So far, the answer has been yes!  So this blog will be designed to help me chronicle these challenges and also to help me feature my new creations.  Up first: Knitting and Football.

Houndstooth and The University of Alabama: I grew up in the SEC, so I know all about rivalries.  I also know about team colors, mascots, and symbolism and in the SEC there is definitely one symbol that stands out, and that is the houndstooth pattern.  For those who need a crash course on University of Alabama history, Bear Bryant, and the history of houndstooth, there is a nice article online here.

Though I didn't attend Alabama, I have a friend who did and she gave me my first real challenge of 2013: "Can you make a pair of houndstooth patterned fingerless gloves?"  I had never actually made fingerless gloves before, nor had I tried the houndstooth pattern, but I was game, so I gave it a try.  The result?  A very interesting pattern and a few happy Alabama fans!



Here is the result of my foray into the fingerless gloves world.  Not bad for a first try!

But of course, that wasn't enough for me (or my friends).  The next step (request, challenge) was to see if I could turn the pattern into a nice scarf.  Now, this has been done before (I've seen patterns online), but I wanted to see what I could create for myself. 

I immediately ran into an issue: the pattern is not naturally reversible.  For those who are knitters, you know my dilemma.  No one wants a scarf that they can't flip around or turn upside down, especially if its an infinity scarf.  So I had to figure out what I was going to do to work around this.

My first thought was to double knit it.  It's a technique I've used but I'm not strong at it.  It also tends to take a lot of time, but it would create a nice and easily reversible scarf.  But then, my friend challenged me again:

"Can you make the other side red?"

Red?  Really?  Sure, why not!

So much for double knitting - I'm sure there is a way to double knit and have one side switch between colors, but it was a technique I wasn't ready to try.  So instead, I decided to just knit a separate red scarf and attach the two together.  Here is what I learned from the process:

1. Knitting an infinity scarf in houndstooth that will loop twice takes a bit of time!
2. The houndstooth pattern is in stockinette stitch, so it rolls up a bit.
3. Knitting a 6 1/2 foot long second scarf on size 4 needles will also take some time. :-)
4. Attaching two scarves together is not easy, but seeing the come together is awesome!

Here is the final result of the houndstooth scarf knitting attempt.  We'll see if it's as popular as the gloves!