A Bluestocking Knits

The moment I saw this scarf at Knitty.com, I knew that I had to make it for a friend of mine whose birthday is on Halloween, and is fascinated by the holiday and death customs throughout history.  We’ve traipsed around cemeteries any number of times, doing genealogical research and teaching each other things about history and archaeology, and having a grand time.  Anyway, needless to say, she has a lot of folk art and artifacts, with quite a collection of sugar skulls, so the Yorick scarf will fit right in.

It’s an easy knit — the shaping of the inner holes is a bit strange, when one is used to trying to keep holes out of one’s knitting! but it comes together very quickly.  I’ve never fulled anything before, at least not on purpose, and so that was an interesting half-hour, too.  I filled the sink with hot water and a nearby basin with cold water and ice, and alternated bashing the scarf around between the two.  Julia was very interested in the process, and helped rub the scarf for a while, until she got tired of that and had more fun with the bubbles, and so she would play in the cold water while I had the scarf in the hot, and then we’d switch, so it worked out all right.  It probably took about twenty minutes, maybe a bit less — the same amount of time for a pot of water on the stove to boil, and the pasta for our lunch to cook, really — with a finish in the washing machine.  (The skull on the left in the top photo is the reverse side, and the other the right side.)  The stockinette edges do still curl under a bit along the scarf edges, but on the whole I’m quite pleased at its skulliness and the interesting stiff-soft feel of the fulled angora.