A Gentleman’s Scarf

I Ripped Back and I’m not Even Sorry

Scarf is not done… but almost. It should have been finished last week and probably would have been. But I ripped it out and started over. I can do that. I kind of love to do that. It makes me feel powerful! I can rip back whenever I like and there is no one to tell me no or look disappointed.

Except for possible the Feline Overlord but she is always looks disappointed in me. She doesn’t count.

Here is how the scarf used to be.

But the bottom curled up. I hated that. I probably would have accepted it though until I decided it was too busy. The brown color sections needed to be spaced out more. So after having decided I wanted 16 rows of black instead of 10, I ripped out and started over. I was about a third of the way through the first version. Here is the new version.

I get credit of a third more of what you see here. They are invisible rows but I did ’em and I want the credit!

Ripping back and being okay with it is closely tied to why I love knitting and crocheting. I do it to please myself and no one else. If I’m not happy with my WIP, I rip it. Sometimes my fellow crafters will realize I ripped out a lot of work and then they make sad, sympathetic sounds. But that’s just them being polite. It doesn’t really matter to them. It only matters to me. I am the only person on the planet who gets an say in what I make. No one else. Not even her.

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 Trapping Ends Because I’m Too Lazy to Sew Them

Since this scarf is stripey, there are quite a few ends to deal with. Too many for me to sew them all in. So in addition to bragging about how I am a fearless ripper of work, I thought I share a cheater way to trap the ends as you knit.

• Hold the working yarn in your right hand
• Hold the to-trap yarn in your left
• With the right-handed needle, go into the first stitch as if to knit…. lay the to-trap yarn over the right-handed needle from right to left …. then knit the stitch with the working yarn

(The to-trap yarn gets “trapped” by the horizontal bar that runs between stitches.)

• Hold the to-trap yarn down and out of the way and knit the next stitch like normal.
• On the third stitch, repeat the trapping maneuver. On the fourth, knit as normal.

Its actually quite easy to do but he explanation makes it sound awkward. Maybe a video will help.