Love The One You’re With

I’ve got pretty yarn.

There, I’ve said it.  I’ve got pretty yarn in my house right now.  (In fact I have more than I should admit to having in public)

I’m willing to bet that you have pretty yarn too.  Maybe you’ve got a small stash of just a couple of skeins of sock yarn.  Or maybe you’re someone who has an entire room dedicated to your stash.

Maybe, just maybe, you’re like me and you pick up single skeins here and there because they’re “pretty.”

So, hypothetically speaking, if you were like me and had some skeins of self striping sock yarn languishing in your stash waiting for the right project, and maybe there just wasn’t quite enough yardage for a pair of socks…. well, this project might just be for you.  It’s the ZickZack scarf.

So here’s what you do:  Love the yarn you’re with.

Dig into your stash.  Go into the deep dark recesses of your stash and find the yarn that you forgot you had.  Pick out two pretty/fun/interesting skeins of self striping sock yarn.  This is the important part folks – they DO NOT have to match.  Seriously, don’t match them up.  Trust me on this one even though it probably makes your skin crawl (It certainly makes mine!).

If you use a yarn that has long repeats of color, like Zauberball, it will have a very different effect than the short repeats that I have.  Either effect is just fine.

The advice I got from Barb at Fabric Works, was to pick one skein with warm colors and one skein with cool colors.  The colors will then contrast really nicely and you get great striping.

Then pick up your needles and cast on.  If you’re anything like me, you’ll have to knit for a few inches before you can really decide if you like the colors.  It takes a while to see the colors as a whole rather than just one or two colors popping out at you.  I even showed it to the pint sized fashion consultants (my girls) to see what they thought.  Both of them had a resounding, “Wow, that’s pretty!”

The cool part about this scarf is that every single one I have seen is different.  And they’re all pretty.