Saturday, March 12, 2016

Digging out of the Backlog: Squiggle Scarf



I have been getting very disgusted and impatient with myself lately as I view the backlog of UFOs (UnFinished Objects) in my craft room. How much neater and organized the room would be without all these baskets, boxes, sacks, and totebags hiding projects started, but stopped midway. How much more I would experience the satisfying feeling of a project finished and put to use. But I seem to be better at beginning, rather than finishing, projects. So, contrary to my nature, I've decided to make myself do something with all these UFOs and try to resist starting more new projects even though my mind is buzzing with new ideas.

This week I finished a knitting project that grew out of another unfinished project. I had started the Morehouse  Farm "Hedgehog Mittens" some time ago. This cute pattern has a stitch they call the "quill stitch" which intrigued me. What if I used that stitch in a scarf and made it longer and more colorful? Abandoning the Hedgehog pattern in mid-mitten, I set off to design a scarf using the stitch. My idea was to create my first knitting pattern as I finished the scarf. More than a year later, both mittens and scarf remained unfinished.

But this week (hooray!) I have finished the scarf and written up the pattern. As this is my first attempt at pattern writing, I'm not sure how well I did, but maybe I'll get some feedback when I release it to the world. One frustration: in the time between starting and finishing the scarf, one of the yarns I chose has been discontinued so duplicating the color scheme would be difficult. And I ended up with a child-size scarf since I had only bought one skein of each color.

Closeup of the "squiggles" on the scarf:


I've posted the PDF version of the pattern on my pattern blog
Now I should really finish the mittens that inspired this scarf...


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