Finished: Brotherly Binary

 The binary scarf, she is finished.

I have knit the last bytes, have woven in the blue ends, and have knotted the grey ends.  As this is a tube scarf made of non-superwash wool, I am confident that time and a bit of felting will ensure that the ends stay put out of sight with that minimalistic approach.  I then finally turned the scarf right side out and added the fringe.

The pattern is Christine Dumoulin's Binary scarf, knit up with Cascade 220 sport yarn.  When finished, this project had consumed about 740 meters of yarn, which Ravelry helpfully tells me is the largest knitting project I have ever made.  It certainly felt like it as its bulk increased; the final unblocked length was 76 in/ 1.9m.  This scarf is longer than I am tall.  Luckily, it is for my younger brother, who is markedly taller than me.

I am proud of how this scarf turned out, and thrilled I didn't get bored with it.  The initial cast-on was followed by a long hiatus, but the entire scarf was knit in just over a month after restarting.

This completes my long stint of knitting scarves for my immediate family, a project which has taken most of the last year.  After I block the tilting ribs cowl and this guy, I will label and send the last of these projects to new homes.  Meanwhile, I am feeling the strong urge to go cast on a sweater for myself.

Still Knitting

Work on the Binary scarf progresses.

It has reached a mass great enough that it can be uncomfortable to hold the scarf on my lap on a hot day.  This scarf only works as commuter knitting because I typically commute with a mostly-empty backpack.

Surprisingly, I am not bored with the pattern, perhaps because it does not have a true repeat.  I must check my selected sequence of ones and zeros for each row of characters, but only for one set-up row.  The color sequence for other rows follows logically from there.  As I mentioned previously, the stretches of color are short enough that I don't have to worry about weaving floats or anything like that, and at this point I've done enough stranded knitting in this project and the Midna Mitts that I have picked up speed.  I try to finish at least two rows of numbers a day, but for most of the past two weeks my average has been closer to three.  I anticipate binding off this scarf in the next few days.

It is a timely finish for this project, as I am signed up for the August edition of the Geek and Nerd swap and am still waiting delivery of a few materials before diving into the handmade for that.  As the month is more than a third gone, I likely have a crafting marathon in store for me.  We shall see!

A Dress Starts with Paper

I have successfully unearthed my sewing table, and therefore been able to start my next sewing project.  It will be a latin dress using the pile of pink lycra I discussed previously.  To me, a dress project begins when I start one of these:

This pile of paper will be the project notebook for this particular dress.  The front page is where I sketch out and make notes about the different parts of the dress: what the front and back look like, a rough idea of how the underskirts and leotard will be put together, what fabrics will be used where, and some idea of what decorations or stoning patterns I plan to use.  I'm not a great artist, but the sketches capture my ideas and give me a sense of what pattern alterations I will need to do.  The plans for this dress are fairly basic, since it will have two only parts, dress and leotard, and I have made no plans for stoning patterns.  Below you can see some of the sketches I've made for other ballgown projects, which were more involved.