Scarf for Grandpa

[afuna]

Oh man, my mom wants me to knit a scarf for my grandpa and she's so enthusiastic about it, that she bought me four balls of cashmere (two dark brown, two light tan) to knit into a scarf for him.

I'm somewhat overwhelmed. It's like she's become the soccer mom of knitting! She's taking the scarf I knit (need to take a picture) and showing it around the family table and she keeps boasting about the fact that I'm knitting and I basically sit on the sidelines and try to act dignified and not like I'm laughing my ass off.

I think it's hilarious that she's going to such lengths to promote me in my knitting. But I draw the line on her trying to help me pick out a pattern she wants me to knit for grandpa, or at her trying to get me to get my grandpa to pick the pattern I want to knit for him -- shooed her away from that idea as firmly but politely as I can; I want some bits of this to be a surprise. In fact, most of it will be, since my grandpa thought I was using some local gold-flecked red (SO VERY CHINESE) fuzzy novelty cotton-blend yarn which my mom made me show him, but this was before she handed me four balls of cashmere.

(No, seriously. Yes, SERIOUSLY!)

I'm nervous about knitting this stuff, though. It feels so much more expensive than what I usually knit, and I'm terrified of messing it up. But I found a nice masculine pattern: http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/seamans-scarf, with the only negative being that I don't think I can make it look nice as two-toned.... unless the cabled portions are a darker shade, and the neck portion is lighter? Trying to decide if that's a good idea.

I'm nervous enough about working with new material (cashmere) + working with new technique (cabling), that I think I'll need to drop by the local yarn store for a consult, and probably cable needles. I have tried cabling with some acrylic yarn; the no-cable-needle method was awkward; the with-dpn-substituting-for-cable-needle-method was slightly less awkward, but still a lot unwieldly and possibly dangerous.

Anyway, back to my mom and her reaction to my knitting. Maybe I should teach her to knit, and then she won't have to hang onto my knitting, ahaha. Oh no. Oh yes. Oh... maybe. Hmm.


ETA: aveleh suggests that with wool that nice, I could get away with a simple striped scarf in either 1x1 or 2x2 ribbing (I have not knit any full projects with ribbing, though I am familiar with the technique, so I am just not sure whether I'd prefer the effect of 1x1 or of 2x2.)

Then with this random stripe generator, I can come up with random stripes easily. Colors not entirely accurate, but good enough.

Comments

[zarhooie]

I agree with Abby on this one. 1x1 ribbing comes out looking *basically* like stockinette stitch but on both sides, and 2x2 looks like, um, ribs. If you want some interest, you could do the cables like this:
| || || || |
| \\ || || |
| || || || |
| || \\ || |
| || || || |
| || || \\ |
| || || || |
| || \\ || |
| || || || |
| \\ || || |
| || || || |
| || \\ || |

And so on, with the \\ representing a cable crossover.

[afuna]

Oooh I like that one. I shall probably take that with a different project, because I've been convinced that for this yarn, the simpler, the better. But with that one, is each column done by ribbing, or is that just to illustrate where the cables line up?

[zarhooie]

The no \\ rows would be knit/purl edging (of the variety to prevent rolling), then knit 2, purl 2, knit 2, purl 2, knit 2, purl 2, knit 2, knit/purl edging. Each || row represents 3-7 rows of actual knitting. You could even do longer intervals if you wanted. the \\s are where you do a cable crossover.

Does that make sense?

[zarhooie]

And while I somewhat agree with D on how you should let a lux yarn shine through simplicity, I do *not* think that this pattern would take away from the yarn. However, that is just my opinion.

[afuna]

Very belatedly (because I wanted to study the pattern first and put it up as a project in ravelry, and I kept putting it off) -- but yes! That does make sense, and I'm already gleefully considering which of my stash I shall be trying it with!

[synecdochic]

1x1 rib. Reversable, gorgeous, looks like stockingette. For yarn like that, do 1x1 rib and just let the yarn itself shine: the nicer the yarn, the simpler the stitch it calls for. Cables would be wasted on it, really!

[afuna]

You all are simply brilliant, thank you for the suggestion. What would you suggest using cables with, though? (Now that I no longer think it's arcane voodoo magic, I'd like to play with it at some point) -- some kind of nice, but not too nice, yarn?

[synecdochic]

Soem nice alpaca or some other animal-fiber yarn, I'd say!

[aveleh]

Oh, man, I must have been half asleep.

The ribbing you definitely want at 1x1. Something like a 2x2 is going to be all... a 2x2 is what you knit for cuffs, so it's not appropriate for a scarf. You could do a much wider ribbing, for a striped texture, but I wouldn't with this yarn, especially because my whole point was to not have a texture to the knit and instead create that visual goodness from the colours.

I could see that scarf pattern looking really awesome if you knit half in each colour, so the switch is hidden behind your head and you get two different colours in front. But if I was making it for my Zaida, he'd find that a little too... something. With that yarn, and two colours, my vote is 1x1 ribbing and then find a stripe pattern that you think he'd like. If he'd prefer something more sedate than random stripes, you can still play it up by doing something like that one I showed you that has the groups of small stripes.

(My Zaida was modern in a lot of ways, but for clothing he's mostly worn the same things for 30 years, even if they're brand new. He totally went with the times in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, and then in the 80s he settled into his classics. But I just realized that my other grandfather totally used to wear bright rainbow striped winter knits, so I'm projecting a bit.)

[afuna]

Hmmm, that is a good point. My grandpa is very traditional Chinese, but he really likes nice stuff. I wonder. I bet I could use "lucky" Chinese numbers to group the number of stripes on,but I'll need to ask my mom which numbers to use. And which to avoid!