Armed with yarn

I tried my hand (if you'll pardon the pun) at finger knitting especially when carrying knitting needles on airlines was forbidden. After I had done some finger knitting, I wasn't quite sure how I would use the long, thin fabric I had created. Somehow winding it into a ball and then knitting it on very big needles was too ironic.
I read about arm knitting on the Knitting Daily blog. Mmmm, I am suspicious of 'quick fix' knitting, but the prospect of running up a scarf or cowl in 15 minutes was tantalising. It helps that the picture is clear, the tutorial helpful and the yarn close to one of my favourite colours. I didn't have yarn that I thought was thick enough but I came across a couple of hanks of Moda Vera Liana yarn that was being sold for $2 per hank. It is a yarn that is usually made into 'frill' scarves and 15 minutes was about right to finish it after I had sewn the two hanks together.

This is the result

The pattern

Materials - two hanks of Moda Vera Liana
Implements - sewing needle, machine sewing yarn, arms

Instructions:
Unravel the hanks. Trim one end of each hank before overlapping them and joining using back stitch or another stitch that will stabilise the seam. You could probably use two lines of fine stitches if you have an obsessive compulsive bent, but you can tuck any ragged ends when the scarf is finished.

Follow Mari's method to cast on three stitches, arm knit your scarf until the hanks are nearly exhausted and cast off.

Variation: for pointier ends, try casting on one stitch at the beginning  and increasing to three stitches by increasing into the back and front of that stitch. In the last row, knit three stitches together.

Some things take time

This skinny scarf with a fat frill was a great disappointment to me. Yeah, I know that mistakes bring opportunities.
This one gave me the opportunity to decide that I have a way to go as a designer and I took two years off from the blog rather than post the picture.
The design would probably work well draped around a Christmas wreath, with the frills as a feature. Since Christmas falls in the hot Australian summer, a knitted wreath may look bizarre. But no more so than Christmas lights blazing in the heat.

Mindful Knitting

Sitting and knitting did for me what sitting quietly didn't. I lasted about 5 minutes over three days. On the first day, the Philosopher Cat (pictured below) tracked me down for a cuddle as I was sitting quietly - a privilege because she generally keeps to herself. She never stays long, and when she had departed, I picked up my knitting and I focused on the pattern as a mantra.

The pattern is for a scarf with frilled ends. It’s my own creation, or as much as anything one knits can be one’s own creation. The ends have a Christmas bell kind of look, it is in a very Christmassy red 8 ply (double knitting/worsted) – a strange choice of activity and project for an unusually warm and humid post-Christmas Melbourne summer.

After quite a bit of unraveling (myself and the yarn) I’m close to grafting the two ends of the scarf together. I am quite familiar with Kitchener Stitch, particularly using it to graft seamless toes for socks, but information on grafting patterned (rib and purl) stitches is more of a challenge.