First, let me start by saying that recycled silk…hanks of it…is absolutely gorgeous. There is nothing cheap about it. It’s colors are vibrant, and each hank is its own colorway. No two hanks are alike. So, when Pippin and I stumbled across it at Knit Purl in Sudbury, MA, we were delighted to buy a hank to make the display scarf.
Let me start by saying that Mango Moon’s Recycled Silk is absolutely gorgeous. The shop we purchased it from charged $23 per hank, and Pippin and I felt that for something nice for ourselves, it was worth every penny. The scarf pattern itself, was an 18st scarf, with a drop stitch. It is patterned using 9s and a 19 but I thought, well, why spend money on 19s. So my first attempt was using 8s and a 17. Other than needle size, I followed the pattern as written. Unfortunately, I had a really hard time knitting it up. Considering the amount of drop stitching involved, I had expected this scarf to knit up rather quickly. Unfortunately, and I don’t know if this is the result of the yarn inconsistencies, it did not knit up as well as I would have liked, and the drop stitches came out all wrong. So I pulled it out.
Armed with a plan to start over, I went and invested in some 19s. I used my 9s and 19s as required by the pattern, but I reduced the number of stitches to 12. I think Pippin did 10. She finished hers much more quickly than I did, and I think her work is more refined and finished-looking than mine. In most things, if not all. But her completion inspired me to finish mine. It began to knit up a lot more easily this time around. I really don’t know if needle size made the difference, or just having some advanced knowledge of what I would be facing when trying to knit it up. But, I managed to finish it, and I am extremely pleased with the result.
Things to note:
I wound my hank into a ball, and part of me wonders if I should have just wrapped the hank around the back of a chair and knit from there. Why? Well, as I wound the ball, I noticed that the silk threads began to fray considerably, giving the scarf a kind of fuzzy appearance. I was using a ball winder, so it is possible that a hand-wound ball would not have produced such a fuzzy result.
I have an affinity for bamboo straights. My second favorite are the Susan Bates Quicksilvers. I think I would recommend this for a snag-free, smooth action. I have not tested this theory, but the next time I purchase some of this sumptuous silk, I will try the quicksilvers out.
