KARABOUTS

Sophie's Rainbow Scarf Pattern

I made this scarf for my lovely niece Sophie for Christmas last year. I posted photos of her scarf on Flickr and Ravelry and I've received a lot of requests for the pattern.

I learned this scarf-making technique from Susan Mills at a knitting and yoga retreat on Monhegan Island last fall. Over the weekend I managed to write out the directions so that you can make this scarf too! This is an easy and fun knit, and a great way to use up those shorter bits of yarn left over from other projects.

You can download the PDF pattern by clicking the link below:

Download sophiesrainbowscarf.pdf

Hope you enjoy making the scarf! I plan to make another one for myself sometime soon.

Summer On Location

Mike and I are currently working on a job that requires us to stay in a hotel across the river in New Jersey. We've been here for 46 days and we could easily end up being here for 46 more.
Hotel life has its ups and downs.
On the up side:
- Someone makes our bed everyday.
- We can have anything we want to eat at any time of the day or night and it's all paid for.
- I have time to crochet and work on my Karabouts patterns during down time.

Right now I'm working on two Sophie Dolls for two lovely women in Kansas City.

While making the dolls, I'm writing and checking the pattern so the Sophie patten will soon be ready for distribution.

On the down side:
- We desperately miss our kitties (this is Iris).

- We also miss our reef tank, our apartment, our friends, my Stitch n Bitch group, and our lives in the city.

Also on the down side, our hotel is in the middle of a bunch of freeways with nothing to do within walking distance.

Luckily, there is a bit of animal life nearby. These are some of the many geese that frequent a low spot in the hotel parking lot that floods every time it rains.

For the foreseeable future I will be spending my days working, crocheting, writing patterns, and feeding the geese that wander over to our hotel-parking-lot-pond. I hope you all have a great summer wherever you are!

Hopping Ghosts and Chinese Knots

For the past few years I have been tying Chinese knots. I got started in 2005 because I wanted to tie "double happiness" knots to put on my wedding invitations.

The double happiness knot is a beautiful knot that is made up of 2 sets of 15 cloverleaf knots. I first saw the knot in the book Chinese Knots for Beaded Jewelery by Suzen Millodot. In order to learn to tie the knot I bought the book Chinese Knotting by Lydia Chen.

My first knot took me FOUR DAYS to complete and contained many mistakes. Here's a photo of that first practice knot in progress (I've already made a mistake connecting my cloverleaf knots!).
I kept at it and eventually I was able to learn to tie the knot and complete the 100 knots I needed for the wedding invitations (although even at my fastest, the knots took about four hours each to tie!).

When I designed my Hopping Ghost doll I was able to develop variations of traditional Chinese knots and incorporate them into his outfit.

I put a variation of a double happiness knot on his chest, a variation of a brocade ball knot on his hat, and compound knots made of two-loop cloverleaf knots for fasteners on his robes and boots.

The knotting detail of Hopping Ghost makes him one of my favorite dolls yet!