Finished: Dirty Martini, Extra Olives Scarf

I call this the Dirty Martini, Extra Olives scarf because while weaving weaving this bad boy, that's what the color scheme was looking like to me and it was all I thought about. I had finished this scarf earlier this month, but have been too busy to take any photos of it. Not to mention that Victoria has been having torrential downpours all month that doesn't allow for any good chances for good lighting for photos.

I had used the yarn that I had originally was going to use for my Elvira top but later discovered was too heavy for the project. I had no idea what I was going to do with those yarns and so they sat in my stash...'til now. I tried to use some math to guesstimate the yardage I would need for this scarf, as I wanted to use up as much of the yarns as possible. I used a skein of Diamond Fine Merino Superwash DK in a light mint green with a few stripes of Flock of Feathers DK in Toucanet for the warp, which I had also used for the weft. My math was a bit off and I ended up with a lot of both yarns leftover, which means I could have made this scarf wider. The Flock of Feathers yarn was a variegated mix of light green, which matched the Diamond yarn perfectly, and kelly green.

As I've mentioned before, I'm not a huge fan of variegated yarns but the kelly green was calling out to me and so I had to buy it. I was a little worried that this yarn was going to sit in my stash forever and now I'm super happy that I found a way to use up a skein. Now if I can only figure out what to do with the other 2 skeins that I have...

According to the labels, these 2 yarns are supposedly in the same weight category. I beg to differ though. If you put a strand of each yarn side by side, you can tell that the Flock of Feathers yarn is thinner and more of a fingering weight. I was hoping that this little factor would mean I could use up a lot of this yarn but in reality I had only used 3/4 of a skein.

Anyways, I really wasn't sure how the scarf would turn out since I was mixing a solid with a variegated. I'm quite happy with the end result and am also quite surprised as to how soft the fabric turned out. During the weaving process the yarns had been quite distorted and I was a little worried with how much space there was between each beat. Now that the scarf is off the loom the yarns have had a chance to relax, but I'm thinking I might do a quick soak in hopes of opening up the yarns a little bit more.

With this scarf I decided to do something a little different than the usual fringe. I decided to try my hand at doing a twisted version. Yeah...never again! Not only was the twisted fringe so darn time consuming, but my fingers were beyond aching by the time I was finished. Maybe the yarn I was working with was way too thin, but the thickness of each twisted fringe was very inconsistent. I think if I were to ever do this again I would only do it on a chunky yarn. And I'm thinking maybe my technique was crap. The top of each twist was on the thick side while the ends were tapered and skinny.

I'm just glad I figured all this out before I tried it out on a more important project. Like on something pink.

I'm not quite sure if I'm going to gift this scarf or not. I'm not particularly fond of the fringe and don't think I can handle giving away something I've made that I'm not 100% proud of. Yes, this is the perfectionist in me talking.