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Sunday, February 13, 2011

Annotated Tips for Knitting the Noro Scarf - Part II

About 1/4 done with my Noro Scarf adventure. Here's what I've learned so far:
The instructions - Had to look up how to do slip stitch edging. There is a video out there on this scarf. It has slightly different instructions than in the original pattern. Don’t follow the video. Just slip the first and last stitch purlwise on the second row of each color. (slipping purlwise = put your right-hand needle through the stitch as if to purl, slip it off the left needle onto the right needle and continue with the pattern). Turns out very nicely.

The slip stitch edging - Worth learning to do for the very nice finished side edges. What I learned the hard way: when you reach the end of the second row of a color and are slipping the last stitch purlwise, make sure your yarn is pulled to the front so it’s in the right position to pick it up again in the next color shift!

The tension - With all the color changing and yarn flipping etc, especially at the beginning, you will be tempted to pull the yarn up tight at each color change. Don’t!! Relax on those edge stitches so they are not at all tense or tight or you will get a curve in your scarf edge. I pulled the yarn up completely, but didn’t cinch it tight. Some of those loose edge loops seemed huge but they usually stretched out tight as I continued.

The yarn - Beautiful color shifts and it’s addicting to watch the changing color stripes…what cool color combo comes next? However, it varies quite a bit in thickness and thinness. Had to cut out a few sections where it was so thick it created big puffy sections in the knitting. Also .. the knots! Has knot in it that never seemed to occur on an edge so had to cut out those and rejoin yarn for those too. Also .. don't be afraid to cut out certain undesirable colors or re-roll a skein entirely in the opposite direction to avoid the effect in the third photo. Both skeins had a light grey/green color at the same time. The colors are different, but similar enough that the stripe effect is lost for a bit.
Here's the scarf on my Ravelry Page: Noro Striped Scarf

3 comments:

mosaicology said...

Where do you find this type of wonderful yarn? This is an exquisite piece of knitting! Thanks for sharing.

Anonymous said...

Thank you so much for the tips about where to put the yarn when slipping the final stitch and also keeping the yarn loose up the sides - I was trying to figure out for ages what was wrong with my scarf!

much appreciated :-)

Anonymous said...

You're very welcome :)