6th time’s a charm

It took some persistence, but I think I am finally on track with my mom’s scarf. When last we checked in, I had started the scarf four times and wasn’t especially happy with any of the attempts.

For my 5th try, I decided that another marled yarn might harmonize best with the main yarn, which is Schoppel Wolle Edition 3. “Marled” is when you ply different colored singles together in a plied yarn. Think “candy cane” or “barber pole” and you’ve got the idea. Here is the main yarn again:

And here is a skein of handspun I found in my stash. It has a lot of purple and green in it, so I thought it would mix well with the commercial yarn:

And so I began the pattern again. Here is how it looked when I abandoned it:

Not terrible, just kinda “meh.” The main thing that bothered me while working on this is that the handspun is quite a bit thinner than the commercial yarn, and the resulting fabric didn’t have that irresistible squishiness that you want a scarf to have.

I recalled that both S1 and Boy 2 preferred attempt #3, which is the 2-color sequence design with the natural white yarn with it (that yarn is Knit Picks “Bare,” which may not still be sold by the same name… I bought a bunch once in order to try dying and it comes in handy every now and then). So I gave that another go and kept at it longer than 8 rows:

Better? I am liking this much more now than I did the first time around. And the texture is right – very soft and squishy. I’m finally on track with this project!