The Ombre Scarf..

I follow lots of blogs including the colourful Dayana Knits.  Dayana is a knitter who takes knitting to the next level.  In my eyes, she literally paints with yarn.  Her output is so great that I sometimes wonder how she finds time to sleep.  If you haven't come across her blog before, take a quick look and prepare to be amazed!

I first met Dayana when she answered an appeal for help with adding handwriting to a photo.  At the time I had an old computer which was sadly lacking in editing programs.  Not only did Dayana suggest how to do it, she actually did it for me!!

I had already decided to use up some of my 4 ply scraps when I read Dayana's post about ombre knitting.  She had managed to knit a whole jumper just using her leftover scraps.  Ombre is French for "shadow" and describes a technique for knitting with two yarns together in a way that bleeds the colours into each other.  

I sorted out my greens, creams and beiges and produced this scarf. It breaks the mould for me as I soon realised that it is not reversible.  But I carried on because I found the stitch interesting to knit.  It produces a strong fabric that would actually make a lovely cushion cover.  The only change I made to Dayana's pattern was to change the colours every eighth row instead of every fourth row.  That halved the number of ends to be sewn in.  But if I ever get around to knitting something smaller such as a cushion  cover, I would change the colours every fourth row for a more subtle effect.

Most of the yarn that I used is real wool and came from an English convent that closed down.  4 ply yarn goes a long way and I only used 103g, so there is still some left for other projects.  The scarf is not a thing of beauty.  But it is very warm and will eventually go to Operation Orphan.

Summer has finally reached my part of the world.  It is a very busy time of year for me and I am now knitting nothing bigger than a hat..... unless the urge to start a bigger project grows too strong!