Monday 23 January 2017

Making it up as I go along

I've just finished a new scarf design, Red Zebra - so named because it's red, it's striped and the yarn I used is called Zebrino which I thought sounded a bit like zebra.


This scarf is one of those where I played about with the yarn until I came up with a combination of stitches that gave me a look I liked. By working double increases and double decreases all across one row of the two row repeat, I got a textured pattern where both sides, though different, are equally pleasing. The other row is plain knit by the way, just to give you a rest. The only slight drawback was a tendency for the knitting to pull to one side; I got round this by working blocks of the stitch pattern separated by five rows of rib. This meant that the 'right' side of the scarf changed with each block so I ended up with a straight scarf.

Here's another scarf where I used lots of increases and decreases to come up with a heavily textured pattern.


With this one you get puffy triangles on one side of the scarf and a lattice pattern on the other. Somehow, this made me think of dragon scales so I called this one Jabberwock Scarf after the wonderful poem Jabberwocky by  Lewis Carroll. Here's just one verse ...

                                                   'Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
  The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
                                                   Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
                                                   The frumious Bandersnatch!'

Definitely one of those poems to learn by heart. Rhythm and nonsense are an ideal combination when sharing poems with children. Edward Lear is a great favourite with my family; I learnt The Owl and the Pussy-cat off by heart when my son was a baby so that he could watch me saying it. We also loved his Alphabet - who could forget King Xerxes, 'Xerxy, Perxy, Turxy, Linxy Lurxy, Great King Xerxes'?  Dr Seuss's ABC is another wonderful one to chant along together.

What are your favourite nonsense poems?

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