Scanning the Sky... (Week 1)

Not long after deciding to create a sky scarf I settled on my yarn for the project. It's an Alpaca blend, so it's incredibly soft and was reasonably priced for the amount in each skein. I anticipate having a lot left over of certain colors (mostly the very dark grey and the white).

This dark grey is for thunderstorms!

This deep, gorgeous blue (love!) is for cloudless sunny days (like today!).

 The white is reserved for foggy days, or if we get snow (boo, snow! Not a fan).

Cloudy with sun. So far this variegated yarn has been put to good use (4 out of 8 days).

And grey for cloudy-maybe rainy days that lack the intensity of a thunderstorm.

Now that you've been introduced to the yarn, let's move onward for the Work in Progress shot!

This represents 1 week of sky-scans done in the Tunisian Crochet Knit Stitch

I love the backside of the project as much as the front.

So, some details...

 ~ I'm using a 5mm afghan/tunisian crochet hook with bulky weight yarn. I'm keeping the tension very loose (if I'd crocheting in traditional method I would have gone with at least a 6mm hook, maybe larger) so that it doesn't roll in on itself.

~ Since this is one-row-a-day, I began my work by chaining 24 (as in, 24 hours). My scarf is 6.75" wide. 1 week ended up being about 2.25", which puts me on track for a scarf that is.... (mathing in progress...) oh, only 34" (?). Ha, will have to extend my deadline a bit! ;)

~ I pick a time of day to record the sky. One thing I realized within the first day is how ever-changing weather is! This is, of course, what makes these sky scarves so gorgeous, but it could have been a source of frustration to me if I woke up to a rainy day that turned partly cloudy and ended with a big expanse of azure blue. So, I chose noon as my sky gazing-row creating time, and whether the weather looks different prior to or after that time frame is not really a concern to me. This scarf is little snap shots of sky.

~ I'm not there yet, but I want this scarf to be versatile (because I can see myself wearing it every day!). I plan to create button holes in the second to last row (and sew buttons to the first row), so I can change it from a regular scarf to an infinity scarf at my whim. Now, how to create button holes in Tunisian crochet.... uh, well I have months to figure that out. ;)

Have a Lovely Day!
~Jess

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I'm Not Knitting

I really fell hard for this "Conceptual Knitting" trend. It's been on the back of my mind for ages. I pictured granny square blankets where each square represents a day and each color represents a bird in my bird feeder, scarves where each row color is picked by students in my yoga classes, or a great big (mostly green) blanket where every time something ripened in my garden I'd incorporate a special stitch in the appropriate color (red tomato"bean stitches", orange carrot "spike stitches", pink strawberries "bobble stitches"). Despite these musings, I still kept coming back to the original design: tracking the variations of the sky.

Yes, I settled on the Sky Scarf by Leaf Cutter Designs. It goes like this: every day you look up at the sky and create a row that reflects what you see (light grey if cloudy, dark grey on stormy days, bright blue when the sun shines and the wind blows, blue and white blended when partly cloudy and so on). At the end of the season (or year), you end up with a gorgeous representation of the sky over your home.

The "trouble" is, I don't knit. And it happened that all the scarves I was falling for were knit scarves. The crochet representations looked much too tidy for some reason.

Now I'm not about to take up knitting.

So after a bit of internet research and some youtube tutorials, I present:

The Tunisian Knit Stitch!
(click the link for a fantastic youtube tutorial!)
(if you need more convincing: she has a British accent that is so lovely to listen to)

Crocheters everywhere who love the knitted look but can't seem to figure out how clicking two sticks together could create a fabric: REJOICE!!!
:)

Friends, this is exciting. I'm crocheting a Sky Scarf that will look like it's knit. I was going to start in September so the scarf would track my favorite time of year: Summer's end and Autumn's beginning. But. Well, I mean it's only a week and a half until September starts.... so really we're nearly there and it's absolutely fine that I begin now. Who made this arbitrary "Start in September" rule, anyway? Me. So I can break it.

More details and pictures to come. Check back!

Have a Lovely Day!
~Jess

*** 

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