Whistle WHile You Work

or, actually, listen to "The Ruby in the Smoke" by Phillip Pullman and watch videos on www.threadbanger.com
The scarf continues to grow slowly. i'm working in a chunky, varigated wool blend in greens and browns. i'm planning another measuring day. at the moment the scarf is taking up a large amount of the boy's staircase. more pictures soon!

New Fraction

The scarf is now 1/8th of the way there! The official length count as of tonight is 507.6 feet.

In other news: the cat decided to um... help me sort the yarn. Yeah, that's it, sort the yarn! This led to all the yarn sitting on the table waiting to become part of the scarf getting impressively tangled. The end result of that was 2 hours of ball winding and some truly interesting color combinations coming out of the resulting mystery ball. I'm down to the last of that little ball and then onto some yarn that eilonwy sent me.
I've also decided to work on the Ships Project this month. This project gets handmade hats and slippers and scarves to military personnel overseas. So far I've gotten two hats done and I hope to have at least 3 or 4 more done by the next ship date in January. I got most of the second hat knitted tonight while we went to see "The Fantastic Mr. Fox," which was entertaining, but not quite what I expected.

Reorganization

I have remeasured and retagged the entire scarf. The paperclip method was ingenious, but flawed. The paperclips tended to snag on later portions of the scarf and lead to grief and angst. Now I am using yardsale tags with the length written on them.

Also, now that the scarf is so long I remeasured it into 10ft increments and wound it around a dowel in order to give the whole scarf sushi roll some stability. The scarf is now a double decker object! it was starting to take up a bit too much floor space.

The rerolling was, in part, determined by the fact that when the scarf went on a field trip to the Ross Bridge Civil War craft festival it came apart a bit.

The scarf is now longer than City Federal by a good 50 feet!!!!

At last measurment it was 370ft and is almost 380 now.

Here are some pictures of the scarf at my booth:

Kitten of Approval

The scarf is now coiled up on the boy-type-person's balcony floor with the working end tossed over the railing. The cat has decided that this is the best thing ever...

Hearts & Flowers

Funny knitting story before we get to the scarf info:
Last night I went to see the Pink Box Burlesque do their "Big Top" charity show. The proceeds went to the The Elephant Sanctuary and the Children's Craniofacial Association. I was sitting in
the second row working on a hat for one of the performers who happens to be a dear friend. When the emcee took the stage she pointed me out and asked if I could possibly whip her up some pasties. I, of course, said no problem. I would like you to know that by the end of that show I had a lovely hat to had over to my friend, Miss Ducky, and a damn fine pair of knitted, tassled pasties made with Lorna's Laces Shepherd Worsted in the colorway "Aslan." It's so important to keep one's nipples warm don't you think?

I decided after January that I enjoyed doing theme knitting
so all the February knitting has been in holiday appropriate colors (where else am I going to use fuzzy pink yarn?).


February has seen significantly less knitting than January now that the scarf is permanently at Drew's. I've been doing more reading and less t.v. watching, which leads to less knitting.

Prior to watching "Dollhouse" tonight the scarf was just over 3388 inches (282.333 feet). For scale: the Flatiron Building in New York is 285 feet.

The pink and purple yarns are all from donations and so I haven't got a clue what company most of them are from. But here are a few closeups:








This is an almost popcorn-y yarn that Sally and Barbara from Tuscaloosa brought me. It's very stiff when knitted up on these needles.











Below that you can see a fun fur in purples and pinks. Also from Sally and Barbara. I know Ellen was selling this stuff when I first started working at Serendipity, but I have no recollection of brand name.



This yarn was a ribbon- type also from Barbara and Sally.
















I'm reasonably certain that this is an alpaca-blend and I think I got it from one of the lovely ladies at Knit Nouveau. It's so soft. I love alpaca. Not, however, as much as I love angora. And I hear that there's a bunny in the area that needs a haircut. I may have to see what I can do about getting in on that.












This is a pink DK weight wool. It was nice to work with but as per usual with this stuff does not have a label or a clear donor. I know it came in one of the bags I got recently, but I can't remember which one.









This last yarn is very, very soft and very very synthetic. It came from Barbara and Sally and I'm fairly positive that they got it at Serendipity a few years back, but I don't know the brand name as per usual.

From the beginning

I have decided to take my scarf notebook and type it into this blog. I'm backdating all the entries so that they are listed on the day that they were actually written. The day the scarf began was June 5, 2008 if anyone wants to jump back and read about it from the start.

Eris

There is going to be a bit of a change in the scarf. I'm not quite done with the yarn Eilonwy
sent me. However, yesterday my cat, Eris, was killed.


She got out of the house and was killed by some dogs living in a nearby yard.
In her honor all the yarn going into the scarf for the month of January is going to be black or white. I miss her very much.