Tania Scarf

This scarf was inspired by Laura Aylor's Lizard Ridge Afghan in the Fall 2006 issue of Knitty. I found her use of Noro Kureyon's self striping yarn and short rows really intriguing and I wanted to knit one for myself. I thought it would be a good idea to do a test run by making a scarf first, before I went wild and purchased $200.00 or more worth of yarn. I had recently received a gift of a skein of Noro Silk Garden #217 from someone who was reducing her yarn stash and I had been trying to find a good project for it. I thought the Silk Garden would be a good choice for a scarf because it's a bit softer on the skin than Kureyon.

I modified Laura's instructions to fit the width of my scarf. While I've done short row work in the past, I really struggled with the short row instructions for a while. I don't know if I was tired or something, but I had trouble figuring out the flow of the instructions. I tried drawing a color coded sketch on graph paper to guide me. I spent a few hours drawing color coded boxes and crumpling up the graph paper before I moved on to an excel spread sheet where I marked each stitch to show what direction the stitch was worked and then color coded the boxes to show which row or portion of a row I was on. Eventually I had a Eureka moment and understood what to do. Once I began knitting, I quickly memorized the steps and rarely needed to look at my chart.

As Laura's instructions indicate, the short rows knit up with very bumpy texture. I originally planned to block the scarf flat as Laura did for her afghan, but as I knit, the scarf took on a life of its own and I fell in love with the waffle-like texture. I've been thinking about ways I could maintain or exaggerate the texture rather than squashing it flat. I've considered lightly felting the scarf or perhaps using shibori felting methods to make the texture stand out even more.