Lunamoth

The scarf-for-a-certain-someone, blocking

Over the last few days I have been knitting the scarf shown here, rather than the stole and socks mentioned in my previous post.  It will be a Christmas gift to someone who sometimes reads here, so it’s a bit of a secret, still.  Once it’s done blocking I’ll take a proper photo of it and write up the pattern and post it (here and on Ravelry).

I used a new (to me) yarn I found at Walmart, of all places.  It’s Georga brand 100% mercerized wool.  I have been trying to find out more about the mercerization of wool — I’m only familiar with it as a process used on cotton, but I can’t come up with any useful information.  It doesn’t make a superwash wool, as the washing directions are to handwash in warm water and lay flat to dry.  It does make the yarn a bit shiny, and gives it a sort of slick, cool feel.  If I didn’t know it was wool, I might think it was an acrylic (wool that feels like acrylic; what a concept).  It comes in at 11 wraps per inch, so it’s a sort of dk or worsted weight.  Someone on Ravelry suggested not using it for socks, as it doesn’t hold up well enough to the wear.  For a scarf, though, it should be just fine, and that little bit of silky feel it has will be nice against the skin.  The price was pretty good, too — $8.00 Cdn for two 100 gm skeins.  Comes in a good selection of colours and a few variegated colourways, too.  I think it would be a great choice for a garment for those who find most wool too itchy (of course, I am not one of those — heck, I have a pullover I made out of handspun Black Welsh Mountain wool, and I don’t find it too itchy — so perhaps a more “sensitive” person should weigh in on its next-to-the-skin suitability!).  Overall, not a bad yarn for the price; good for hats and scarves and mittens, I think.