Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Black and White Hitchhiker


When my mom saw my hitchhiker scarf, she wanted one of her own.  She requested it to be in black and white, which was somewhat problematic to me.  Hitchhiker looks great in variegated yarns, but black and white is not something that I could dye on my own.  I could make it with two different colored yarns for stripes, but that takes away some of the magic of pooling.

When I was at Vogue Knitting Live, I scoured the marketplace to find a skein that would fit my vision.  I found a really cool black and white skein in the  Sophie's Toes Booth,  (I think the name was Owl something) but there were hints of yellow that made it just not quite right.  (Her yarns are fantastic though, so you should check out her Etsy shop!)


Finally, in the Lost City Knits booth, I found the perfect skein.  "Hitchcock" goes from a deep grey/black to a very pale grey.  It is not quite black/white, but looks great with any black heavy outfit.  Plus it would work with any type of color.  385 yards/100 g superwash merino yarn.


The yarn still smells strongly of vinegar, but maybe I'll block the project when I'm done.  Certainly I can wash it and lightly block it (something I haven't bothered to do with my other hitchhikers.)  The vinegar sent went away while I was knitting the yarn, I think it just needed some airing out!  

I love the way the colors pooled when I wound the skein into a ball!

My concern for the project is that there are only 385 yards.  I want the scarf to be large enough to work well.  I decided to knit this one on size 6 knitting needles, rather than size 4 that I have used for the three others.  I started with 109 g and  2 g remained at the end.

Sherry's Rainbow Hitchhiker was knit out of hand dyed Palette yarn.  
I shouldn't have been too worried, the size of this scarf ended up being comparable with the other two hitchhikers I knit in 2012.  Best of all?  My mom LOVED it!


I am a little bummed that 3 of my 12 in 2012 shawls are hitchhikers… but I swear that this isn’t my fault! The first one that I made was so popular that people kept requesting that I make it for them, too!  I wouldn't be too surprised if I end up making another hitchhiker in 2013...  


Technically I made 4, if you count Indy's bandanna!