AngiPants Design

My uncle rides a motorcycle, and I thought the Yorick scarf from Knitty Fall ’05 would be perfect for him. I had remembered him telling someone that he hated wearing scarves while riding because the ends always flapped loose. I thought I would be all clever and make the scarf 4 feet, just long enough to tie at his throat and hang down a few inches so the ends would always be tucked into his leather coat. I worked for several days on it and finally finished. I attempted hand felting for the first time, and the scarf came out perfect!

I presented the scarf to him and he thanked me for it, and I never saw him wear it. To be fair, I did give him the wool scarf in July. Well come New Years Eve morning he asks if I could make it longer. He wanted to wear it out that night to a New Years party that was outside. Since I had hand-felted the scarf via shocking it with hot and cold water, the scarf wasn't as felted as it could be, and I could still see some stitch definition. I cut the scarf in half, pulled out the felted stitches till I had some live stitches, and was off knitting. Several hours later and several length tests later he deemed the length sufficient at 6 feet. I didn’t want to hand felt the scarf again, so I threw it into the washing machine with a few jeans.

Once the wash cycle was done I pulled out the scarf to find that some of the jean lint had found its way to the white felted scarf, and that that the new portion of the scarf wasn’t as felted as the old part. Also, the scarf had been curling in on the sides, and so the sides had felted curled. He saw the blue tuffs and the inconsistent felting on his scarf and I could see the disappointment on his face. I set to work hand washing the scarf to pull off the blue and to try and felt the new portion more, while trying to uncurl the edges to make it lie flatter. It was finally “white” enough and “even” enough so I blocked it on a towel and rolled it up to dry. It was done just in time for his party! He got several comments on the scarf with a few people offering to buy it from him. He has since asked me for another in black. This time I will okay the length with him before felting.