92 Colours

Finally, I've managed to write up a pattern from my backlog of finished projects. This one holds the record for the most colours I've used in one pattern - all 92 solid shades of Stylecraft Special DK .

Over the years of using this as my main yarn, I've collected all the colours and they're a great resource whenever it comes to designing a new pattern. They even have their own tower of baskets, each one colour coded with knitted stars.

Anyway, I thought it would be fun to knit a scarf using every single one of the colours but I didn't want to darn in all those ends. This is why my Shade Card Scarf is knitted in the round; the tails of yarn can simply be knotted together and hidden inside the finished scarf.

I couldn't bring myself to choose the colours completely at random - just a bit too scary - so, instead, I worked through them in alphabetical order by shade name. This resulted in some fun combinations and kept me interested as the scarf progressed. I'm pleased with how bright it turned out; it seems that the more colours you use, the better.

If, by any chance, you don't have 92 shades of yarn, you can of course just use the basic pattern with whatever oddments of yarn you do have. Each stripe only took about 3g of yarn, a length of roughly 8 metres or 9 yards.

I've been using my Stylecraft Special colour pegs to choose colours for designs for years now and they are starting to get a bit tatty.

I thought it might be a good idea to have little samples in each of the colours to play with when designing so, while knitting my scarf, I also worked a little crochet penny in each of the colours too.

These are small, textured crochet circles, a few inches in diameter which I think will be just right to give me an idea of how the colours go together. I can pull out some intense shades ...

... some pastels ...

... or perhaps a set of more subdued pastels with a vintage feel to them ...

You get the idea. I also used the same pattern but thinner yarn to crochet a little thread mat for Pamela, my old Singer sewing machine. The original felt one was too small for the modern big reels of thread.

If you'd like to crochet a little penny or two, this is what I did. I used a 3.5 mm hook with my DK weight yarn.

Make 4ch and join with a slip stitch into a ring.

Round 1:     3ch, 11tr into ring, join with a ss to the top of the 3 ch (12 sts).

Round 2:     3ch, tr in same st, 2tr in every st, ss to top of 3ch (24 sts).

Round 3:     1ch, (Frtr round next tr, 2dc in next st) x 12, ss to first Frtr (36 sts).

Round 4:     1ch, working backwards, (miss 1 st, dc) x 18, fasten off and darn in tails.

ss          slip stitch

ch         chain

tr          treble (US dc)

dc        double crochet (US sc)

Frtr      front raised treble, treble worked round post of stitch

My Stylecraft pennies fit nicely into this old glass sweet jar that my daughter gave me. Don't they look nice?