On the fringe

Lately I've been trying to finish some old UFOs, and both of the ones I chose to work on have fringe. I'm not that much of a fringe person as far as what I wear, but I thought these two things were cute when I bought the yarn for them. The first is the Cosmos Poncho from the book Handknit Style. I got 7 skeins of the Tahki Stacy Charles Cosmos a while ago when it was on sale at one of my LYSs. It's kind of nasty to work with but it drapes well. The poncho calls for 9 skeins, but I thought I would do mine narrower and just stop when I ran out of yarn. Here's the original from the book:


Mine came out pretty much the size of this one somehow. It should be a fun thing to wear in the spring with white linen pants or jeans. The fringe still needs some trimming as I haven't done that yet, but other than that, it's all done.


My next UFO project was less enjoyable for me. This is the Montego Bay Scarf by Amy Singer, published in Interweave Knits Summer 2007. What can I say? The same LYS had a shop sample, and I am a sucker for those . . . and it looked so easy. Described as "a mindless openwork pattern," I thought I'd have this done in no time, but I found it an exasperating project for some reason. I had trouble telling which of the rows I was on in the lace, and it wasn't till I picked it back up again after a long hiatus that I figured out how to differentiate between them. Here's the original, made in Handmaiden Sea Silk I believe:


And my version in alpaca:


I used Alpaca With a Twist Fino, a lace yarn, using two strands at a time, the yardage of which was supposed to work out to be the same length as the original. However, after a soak my scarf came out somewhere between eight and 10 feet! Must have been the alpaca, but it had to be frogged about two feet. Another thing is that I came to realize that coral is not my color, especially next to my face, so I decided to dye it lavender.

I have to say my approach to dyeing is to try something and see what happens, definitely not a scientific method. The scarf when it came out of the dyebath was a rather loud purple that would have gotten me mistaken for a Washington Huskies fan:


. . . or something like that. (I'm not a Huskies fan, and I'm not not a Huskies fan, I just don't want to wear clothes associated with a football team.) So, back in the dye pot it went. I managed to get a color I liked by adding some orange, and it came out a plum color. Apologies for the not great photos.



The fringe on the scarf didn't make it. It was already attached when I first dyed it, and there were some coral bits around the ties where the dye didn't penetrate. Overdyeing in orange sure didn't help, so I removed the fringe completely. Considering I had my doubts about getting something usable out of this whole experience, it's okay, I think. Here are the three colors this scarf has been:


What I picked up next is not a UFO but a scarf using new yarn I got at the Madrona Fiber Arts Festival that takes place in Tacoma each year. The yarn is a skein of yummy rustic Blue Faced Leicester/Pygora in a light brown. Both yarn and pattern for the Curlicue Fringe Scarf are from Toots LeBlanc in Oregon.


Now this is truly mindless knitting!