Thursday, January 22, 2009

Confessions of a Knitwit

The first step to overcoming a problem is admitting you have one, right? Well, I'm not so sure I really have a problem. Really, I'm just being productive. Keeping my hands busy. I can stop at any time. [Looks down at photo.]


Sigh. Hi everyone. My name is Diane and I'm addicted to knitting scarves.

Can you really blame me? Yarn is so colorful and shinee. Yarn is soo soft and fuzzee. Yarn is so cheap: I can make a scarf for under $10, and often under $5. And scarves are so easy to make. Unlike the sweater I started two (three? four?) years ago that is only half-finished, scarves require no thought, no row counting, no planning. Just knit knit knit (and occasionally purl purl purl) and before you know it, I have a scarf. (Or sometimes you have the scarf. I often get too much yarn and make an extra or two.)

It started simply: I thought it would be nice to have a maize-and-blue scarf to wear to Michigan football games, especially the really cold ones in November. I bought some feathery yarn—feather/fluff/chunks mean you can use big needles and thus fewer stitches—and voila! Matching M scarves for my mom and me. I picked up a couple of ombre patterns (the changing colors mean you get a multicolored scarf without fussing with changing yarn), and I was off! I'm particularly susceptible to clearance yarn: the scarf on the far left was only $1 a skein, and one skein was enough for a scarf. Well, after a bit of reknitting. I have been known to unravel everything and start over, changing the pattern or size. With my most recent addition, the extremely soft blue scarf fourth from the left, I used almost the entire 100g skein before deciding it was too short and I should start over with fewer stitches. So what if I ripped up all that work—I got to reknit the whole thing!

It's fun! It's cheap! It's pretty! So don't tell me I have a problem. At least not if you want me to knit you a scarf.

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