Moss Diamond Scarf Some yarns are really bad about changing shape after you knit them. Some stitch patterns behave very differently in small swatches than in large swatches. I have a sweater vest I knitted in a ribbed lace pattern that is now almost knee-length. It keeps stretching lengthwise. I used to wear it over pants and now I wear it over dresses. The scarf I'm knitting for my mom is doing the exact opposite. The longer it gets, the more it tends to expand width-wise. It's based on moss stitch, which has a tendency to bias. For a scarf, this is not such a big deal, but it's gone from a gauge of about 6 stitches to the inch to 5 stitches to the inch, so the scarf is something like 15" rather than 12" wide. I say "something like" because this is a combination of moss stitch and wide ribbing. The ribbed sections compress and the moss stitch sections expand, so I get a different measurement (somewhere between 13" and 15") every place I measure it. I kept thinking it might start stretching lengthwise (and thus shrinking widthwise) like the sweater vest, but it's over 2' long and it shows no sign of getting longer and thinner. Yet. Given its antecedents, I suspect it might. Eventually. This scarf was knitted in a double-stranded Jaggerspun silk/wool fingering weight yarn. Light as a whisper and warm as a hug. I loved it so much that I never gave it to my mother, but wore it all winter under a light jacket. It never stretched out of shape.

Copyright © 2004 by Heather Madrone. All rights reserved.