Neck-warmers

A series of little projects on my needles have been NECK-WARMERS. Yup, warm & woolly neck coverings. They’re simple little projects, no intellectual or emotional bandwidth necessary, and they make great gifts. Being a yarn store owner I’m always really bad with holiday gifts, since my fall knitting is consumed by store projects. I’m feeling pretty good about myself at this point – I’ve never had all my holiday gifts finished ahead of time, especially not before the end of the fall, much less before the start of fall!

The yarns are for the most part old stuff, dug up from my stash (except the kids’ below, they chose their own colours). That’s another great thing about neck-warmers, they don’t use much yarn. They’re proving to be a wonderful way to use up those random skeins of nice yarn that have been lingering for years (you know, the ones you found on sale, or you picked up while you were travelling, or from that yarn club subscription).

Oh, a few more things I’ve found about making neck-warmers ….

1. The’re small and travel extremely well, great for summer getways.

2. They’re fast little knits, and by the time I’m bored it’s off my needles.

3. They’re a fun way to play around with different yarns, see how things work up.

Guidelines

• All my neckwarmrs have been worked in a 1×1 (k1, P1) rib – it helps maintain a bit of shape and elasticity when worn.
• I’ve been using 4mm/US6 needles with worsted weight yarns, and 3.75mm/US5 needles with DK and sport weight yarns.
• Different fibres have different qualitites, so the size is never really exactly the same, but it doesn’t matter. For worsted/aran weight cashmere about 100 sts seems to be right for an adult, for worsted merino about 110 sts seems good for an adult, for DK/Sport weight cashmere 110 sts looks ok. Sizing is all really a bit of a crapshoot, I never really know how the fit is working until the garment has been worn for a little while and stretches to fit the wearer. Standard wools (like merino) are fairly bouncy and keep their shape well, cashmere and other luxury fibres like camelids have little memory and can stretch with wear.
• All of the project details are in my Ravelry Project Pages

Kids Neckwarmers

Each of the kids’ neck-warmers used less than half a skein of their respective yarns. I think I might have enough left over for a matching hat for each of them, but maybe I’ll dive into a second skein just in case.

The colours were chosen by the kids themselves (although if I had to choose a colourway for a seven year old girl I’d have bet on the same halucious rainbow my niece picked out for herself). My nephew was INSISTENT on a purple & green colour combo, but that’s a tall order and he finally settled for purple, green & blue (I don’t think I got to the green part of the colourway).

LEFT Manos Del Uruguay Alegria Grande, colour 9275 Locura Fluo (see project)

RIGHT Cascade 220 Superwash Wave, Colour 114 Spring (see project)