D Is For Darby

Last week, one of my sisters asked me to make my almost-two-year-old nephew (her son) a scarf.  Obviously I said yes.

She wanted a warm, soft, machine-washable scarf, and so I headed to my LYS and came across some RYC Cashsoft DK that fit all three categories.  I picked up two balls in blue (514) and one in orange (510) and set off to make a small tube scarf.

After casting on the first time, I thought it would be a fun idea to duplicate stitch his name or initials into the scarf, but after charting both out, I realized I didn't have the right number of stitches, so I ripped out.  I cast on again, this time with more stitches and smaller needles (because I didn't want his scarf to be too wide), but then I scrapped that idea, but I can't remember why.  I then cast on again with the original needles and a larger, but not as large as the last time, number of stitches and knit for a bit, but it was just too wide.  So I ripped that out, and cast on one final time after deciding that I would just duplicate stitch a "D" into the scarf instead of his name or both initials.

So I looked up how to duplicate stitch and went to town:

...and I didn't like it.  Not only was it not centered (and I'm not sure how because I counted and counted and counted to make sure I had the right number of stitches and rows), but I also didn't like the way the duplicate stitch looked.  I didn't like the blue peeking through the vertical lines, which I'm assuming is just a flaw with duplicate stitch because it doesn't actually cover up a stitch, but rather makes a new one between already existing stitches.  Which I guess is another flaw, because it then sort of distorts the knitted fabric.  Anyway, I wanted the D to be part of the scarf, not some oddity stitched on top of it.

So I ripped out again.  No harm done, it's only a small scarf and I had lost a total of a day, and that's not too bad.

I think my new D looks better, but maybe that's just me, and I'm sure the old one would have been fine, but I like to make things difficult for myself.

You see, this time I actually carried the orange yarn with the blue while knitting and did an odd sort of mix between stranded knitting/intarsia-in-the-round to get the D into the scarf.

It was slow going, but I like the results.  (You can tell that the yarn was starting to get a bit fuzzy at this point).

Now that the D was done, it was straightforward knitting until I was done, and pretty soon I had a finished scarf.

Pattern: None

Needles: US 5

Yarn: RYC Cashsoft DK in blue (514) and orange (510)

Time: Started December 10, 2009.  Finished December 13, 2009

I can also now show you the sweater that I'm working on because shortly after I published my last post, Todd published the pattern for his new Brigade pullover.  I'm this far right now:

That's all for today, happy Tuesday everyone!