Thursday, December 20, 2007

A story of: "Recycling the ole' scarf"

Once upon a time a young woman made a scarf. After learning the single and double stitch, she became ambitious to try making one (a scarf) for herself, "After all, there's nothing to it," said she. So she bought a lovely roll of homespun yarn with several soft colors in it that would suit her green coat nicely.

Upon working on it, she noticed that she began doing fewer and fewer stitches in each row ... which obviously made the width smaller and smaller. And so she added one stitch here, one stitch there, until the end was as wide as the beginning. At last she was done with it. The color was lovely, but she had to admit that the scarf looked rather strange with seeing "waves" of small widths and wide widths throughout the scarf.

A year later she became very dissatisfied with it. With more knowledge in crocheting (from a dear lady who is teaching us), she learned that each row must have the same amount of stitches and that one must chain one or two at the end in accordance to the kind of stitch.

And so she went out to find another roll of the same kind of yarn, and made herself another scarf. Using a single stitch, and 20 stitches in a row, she finally finished her scarf:

She even put tassels on the end! (Do they look funny? I was hoping for more "fluff" but ran out of yarn in the end.)
But to her only disappointment, the colors were much brighter than the original one. While she likes brighter colors in some things, she felt like she was wearing a rainbow (although wearing it would be a reminder of God's promises!).

And so she decided to take apart the ole' scarf after firmly deciding that no amount of extra adornment would make it better when what it really needed was a true transformation (a reminder that this could be said of our own lives sometimes ... how many of us "cover up" or "add" when it's our hearts that need to be changed?).


And this young woman is going to start over. This time, she is going to try doing the half-double stitch and see what happens. (Thankfully I saved the rest of the roll of original yarn too, to add to the length and maybe some tassels.)
End of story. =)

6 comments:

Lauren Christine said...

Last night as I lay in bed, I was thinking of the same thing! I have a scarf I knitted that I hardly ever use. It might get taken apart one of these days too...

Rachel said...

Fun story! Good for you--I know by experience that unraveling homespun can be hard. :) I think the first homespun scarf that I did was made with that color blend, too.

Cheri said...

Lauren,

It's a great way to save money too. =) I should have thought about taking apart the old one before I bought that new roll. Oh well, at least I got it on sale and now I'll have two scarves. =)

Rachel,

Taking apart the homespun was not easy by any means! Hmm, that was probably the one that I saw on you when we were at Celestial Seasonings. I had figured that you saw mine from last year and made one like it. =)

See ya tomorrow!

Anonymous said...

I love it! It's beautiful! And how creative to "recycle" the ole' scarf!

Blessings!

Mackenzie said...

Haha, that is so something I would have done!! I have several balls of that very same yarn that I'm making a cozy blanket out of...I just love it! I think you'll be happy with the half double stitch...it goes *SO MUCH* faster than a single stitch. Be sure to show us pictures of the finished product...and you can always add more to the tassels if you think they need them...my first scarf with tassels I had to add on twice! :)

Cheri said...

Thanks for your encouraging comments! =)

And sure, I'll post a picture of the scarf I'm working on, once it is finished.