According to Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, there is a distinct difference between a "knitter" and a "Knitter" (Knitter with a capital K). "Knitting" is a "lifestyle" and it signals a Knitter who pushes herself to learn new techniques and constantly improve and challenge her skills. I have to admit that I have don't feel that I haven't challenged myself with a project in some time -- most of the projects I have made the past few years have relied on skills I acquired early in my knitting career, when I was far more adventureous and experimental. Although I have made recent plans to explore steeking, felting, entrelac, and do more complex intarsia, those plans always seem to give way to smaller or more directed projects.
I think that this "knitting" streak has been broken though with the successful completion of the Henry scarf pattern from Knitty.com's Fall 2007 issue. The pattern itself is not THAT challenging, but it requires an intense amount of concentration and more preparation than I am used to. The scarf is knit lengthwise, and for the 6-foot scarf I was planning to make, it meant I cast on 260 stitches. Nearly all of the stitches are paired with an increase on the second row, so I was working with 518 stitches per row for almost the entire scarf. And with this pattern, any mistake has to be fixed by going back to the original stitch because the pattern repeat is so rigid so making corrections on future rows simply isn't possible. Thankfully, relatively early on in the pattern, I could easy "see" the pattern on the right side, so didn't need to go back and regularly review my work in the manner suggested by other Henry knitters on Ravelry. And to get the hang of the pattern before starting this 518-stitches-per-row behemoth, I created a swatch with 1/4 of the stitches cast on and tried two different needle sizes on that relatively large swatch to determine which gauge I thought looked better. I am generally a fairly lazy swatcher if you will, so making a swatch of this size, and in pattern, was definitely a huge deal for me and was the first sign I was entering the Knitter-dom.
I used a fingering weight cashmere/merino blend that the Henry recipient -- my friend Mike -- had ordered from YarnCountry.com for the project. The yarn was an excellent fiber and weight to show off the pattern -- the pattern/yarn combination seemed like it would work with both smaller and larger needles as well. The project though with this yarn weight ended up taking almost 4 months to complete. I completed 5 pattern repeats. I also used a standard long-tail cast-on and a normal bind-off instead of the tubular cast-on and bind-off for a slightly cleaner look after reading the Ravelry reviews (and seeing the results of my tubular efforts, which may be more "knitter" than "Knitter"). After blocking, the scarf grew longer than I expected and also became slightly narrower, but the pattern looked fantastic -- as some Ravelry commentators have noted, the scarf appears almost woven instead of knit. I am really excited to see Mike wear the scarf this fall!
Mike's Henry Scarf
Pattern: Henry by Mareike Sattler
Yarn: Yarn Country 50% Cashmere/50% Merino, approx. 2.6 skeins in cobalt blue
Needles: Addi Turbo US4 Circular
Post-Blocking Measurements: 6 3/4 inches wide by 6 feet 7 inches long
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