I bought some SUPER fancy (read: expensive) cotton yarn to knit Andrew a scarf. I made all sorts of fancy swatches for him to choose from (no photos), but he always came back to stockinette as his favorite.
Hey, I just noticed that there's an alpaca on the cotton yarn tag! I thought that was a photo of out-of focus cotton plants. Ha! Hello, cute sneaky alpaca! No wonder this yarn is so very soft ... since it's made by people used to the softness of alpaca.
Well, as knitters probably know, stockinette rolls on the edges and there isn't a damn thing you can do about it. Well, *I* didn't know that. But after discovering that my stockinette was rolling, I did a whole bunch of google searches hunting for a solution.
Most often people suggested that you add a border of garter or seed stitch around the stockinette. I think that's kind of ugly (and Andrew agreed). One person suggested
double knitting, which intrigued me.
When you double knit with two sticks, you cast on double the stitches you want for the width (an even number). Then you [knit, slip purlwise] across. Turn and [knit, slip purlwise] across. Repeat repeat repeat. What you're doing is knitting the front on one side and the back on the other. What you end up with is a tube that's closed on one end!
How awesome is that? It totally blew my mind the first time I really understood what was going on. It's knitting in the round, but flat. The right and left edge are a little goofy, which is why most knitting in the round (like socks) is done on 3-5 needles.
Andrew loved the double knitting (which showcased the super softness of the yarn, too). But once I got several inches done, we realized that the double knitting was WAY too thick. Once the scarf was on, he'd have four layers to try and tuck into his coat. Gah! Back to the swatching board.
In desperation, I tried the easiest stitch there is, garter stitch (all knitting, all the time). He loved it. I didn't try that in the initial round of swatching, because I didn't want to be lazy. I'm all about stunt crafting. Extreme Crafting!
EXTREME!!!
Well, it's actually perfect because I can take this project to places where I'm talking (Craft Bar and the park) and I won't have stitches to keep track of. Just knit knit knit knit ... and talk.
The other good thing is that it's going to use less yarn than the double knitting, so I will probably have yarn left over to try a hat or gloves. Yay!!! I bought some double pointed needles this weekend and I'm itching to learn how to use them.