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I know it's early in the year but so far this is my favorite. It took me a while to figure it out and I still got one part wrong but I still love it. I found this scarf on Ravelry by searching for scarves that were originally published before 1970. The entry sent me to an Australian newspaper archive. You can see the pattern in that archive here. The article had the text written out so I didn't have to try to decipher the tiny print even if I did have to decipher the terms they use.  This pattern asks for:
Row two was hard to read and difficult for me to understand. "2nd row: Work first pattern in loop following the part of pattern, then work a pattern into each loop after each pattern, finishing first st of pattern into loop of last pattern." They use loop a lot to mean different things and I knew after the first section was done that it wouldn't give me that scalloped look when I got to the alternating color section. Fortunately for me, someone else on Ravelry made this scarf and I took a very close look at their version and figured out where I went I wrong. I was just doing the stitch pattern across all of the stitches and not doing the pattern in just one stitch or loop. Once I figured that out this went pretty quickly. Here's the my version. I ran out of the light blue yarn so I finished it off with a last row in gray.  Can you tell what my other mistake was? The two openings were supposed to be next to each other but again, the text was confusing. If I'd looked at the photo again I think I would have done it right but it still works the way it was intended to. Even though this was wool I decided not to block it. It's pretty evenly stitched already and I didn't want to stretch it out. The dense fabric makes it a little warmer.  Criteria:
Is the pattern easy to understand? Not really. If there is a gauge, could I match it? Yes. Does it look like the photo (or illustration in this case)? Yes. Would someone wear this? Yes. Did I enjoy making it? Yes. That gives this one a 4 out of 5. Next week we'll head to 1980!
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Remember this booklet? It had a lot of hat patterns I tried and promptly ripped out. I thought I would give it another chance and try one of the scarf patterns I tried the one in the bottom left corner of the photo.  Style No 2490-231 has a marled look that they got by holding two strands of sport weight yarn together. It uses an I hook and gives a gauge of three sc = one inch. I didn't have enough sport weight yarn to make this but I did have bulky yarn so I tried that and matched the gauge with it. This has an interesting stitch pattern that it took me a few tries to understand. Once I got it though, I liked how it was turning out. I hated the yarn in everything else I tried with it but it looked pretty good in this pattern. Here's a close up of the stitch partway through and also where I had to stop.  I didn't even come close to having enough of the yarn and it was a clearance yarn so I knew there was no way I was going to find more. I ended up ripping it out so for now I'm not rating this one. It might show up again later though if I get enough sport weight yarn to try it their way.
Next week I have a completed scarf from 1937! The Heads to Toes booklet had two of my favorite hats; the Checkered Hat and the Striped Beret so thought I'd try to do one of the scarves from this booklet. I chose the scarf from the set that was a Peaked Hat and scarf. This is the scarf the solidified my "no big scarves" rule.  The pattern uses 12 ounces of worsted weight yarn for both the hat and the scarf and a size F hook. It has a gauge of 7 clusters = 3 inches and 7 rows = 3 inches. I did not get the gauge right. I had a skein of Caron Pound of Love that I thought would be good for this but it's very stiff yarn and I knew that using an F hook for a large scarf was going to make my hands very unhappy. I went up a hook size to a G hook and while it was easier on my hands the gauge was now totally off. I got 6 clusters = 3 inches and 9 rows to 3 inches. The stitch pattern has you pulling up a loop and I couldn't consistently pull it up high enough to make that gauge work. It's a scarf though and gauge shouldn't matter that much right? The pattern starts with chain 384 (oof) and then you do their clusters in every row, cutting the yarn at the end and going back to the first cluster of the row to start the next row. The ends don't get sewn in. You tie them off and mix them in with the fringe at the end. Their cluster was defined as; yarn over, draw up a 1/2 inch loop in last chain 1 space used, draw up 1/2 inch loop in next ch-1 space, yarn over and through 4 loops, chain 1. It ends with a row of single crochet on each long side and the fringe on the ends. I used 12 ounces of yarn on the scarf alone. My fringe is a little longer than theirs and I used a bigger hook so that may account for the difference but if you make both of these you may need more than 12 ounces. When it was done the sides were curling. This might be because my gauge is completely off. I thought washing it would help and while it made the scarf a lot softer it didn't really help the curling. It is really long and if you wind it around your neck the curling doesn't show that much.
I don't like this one but I'm not sure if it's user error or a pattern issue. I'm not sure I would have been able to get the gauge consistent even if I had used their hook size.
Criteria Is the pattern easy to understand? Yes. If there is a gauge could I match it? No. Does it look like the photo? No. Would someone wear this? Yes. Did I enjoy making it? Not my favorite but it wasn't too bad since I went up a hook size. That's 3 out of 5. If I'd used the correct hook to get the gauge right, the last criteria would have been no and we would have still ended up with 3 out of 5 but I would have had sore hands. My 2023 blog theme is crochet for necks. This obviously means scarves but also I might do ties, necklaces or collars. If this category becomes a pain in the neck I may switch to something else partway through the year. I've been looking at vintage scarf/neck patterns and while I have a lot of them in my library many of them are patterns I don't want to make. Here are the types of things I'm ruling out (at least for now):
Rating the neck adornments will be a little harder than the hats. A scarf is more of a one size fits all sort of items so "does it fit?" won't be a criteria. Here are the things I'll try to use for ratings:
I have about 35-40 patterns I've marked as possibilities and that might be enough to get me through the year. The three I have queued up for January are from 1937, 1970 and 1977. Next week I'll have the 1970 pattern from a booklet I made some hats out of already.  A scarf made in all double crochet. I'm not going to make this one. |
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