Friday, December 3, 2010

An Idea, unexpected inspiration

Yesterday I was at Walgreens for just a sec and I saw a young woman wearing a scarf wrapped once around her neck with the long side extending down one leg about to her knee. I live in central Florida; it was still fifty some degrees outside at the time. It was the second day of dramatically colder overnight temperatures, though. I don't usually see such elaborate scarves being worn here in any weather, really. Hers appeared to have a pattern with small squares with little stripes that mimicked a basket weave.

Driving home I had a thought that the Diagonal Box stitch pattern by SmoothFox could make a really interesting scarf. (Technically the pattern is written to make just one quarter of the square to the left, as if starting from any of the corners. I was just determined to make a 12" square in one piece and arrange the diagonal stripes just so.)

I think if making something long like a scarf I'd start off like a small square, maybe just 6", and instead of reducing the number of squares in a row to make a square overall it seems like you could just keep going back and forth along the diagonal with the same maximum number of blocks just as long as you like. I suppose it would actually be reducing by a square on one side and adding one on the other, but still keeping the same number of blocks each time until you get to where the end should be.

The downside to a scarf would/could be that it makes a slightly, but noticeably stiff sort of fabric.  But I have a feeling in softer yarn it would be a little different than in kitchen cotton. Perhaps the number of color changes and loose ends would be an issue. I really did enjoy making this. Will have to do it again sometime!

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