I live with two musicians, it should be no surprise that I pick something up along the way. It’s nice that there is a phrase for when you’ve got to the end and then go back and start the whole thing again because that is exactly what I’ll be doing here. This is the first of the piano keyboards, sett at 12 epi and intended for a scarf. It finished at 78″ long, I’d estimated that it would be 79″ so I got that bang on target. The yarn is JC Rennie 2/11.3nm, it comes in big cones, oiled for machine knitters. I’ve picked up quite a few cones cheaply on Ebay so I already had a kilo of the white but I did have to buy the black.

The draft is from Handwoven of November/December 2011, it has a scarf in laceweight sett at 20epi for each layer and one in chenille sett at 15. I was reluctant to trim the pattern down to get the same size scarf at 12 epi because the gap between the keys is already as narrow as it can be. If I made the keys narrower and shorter to allow for the thicker yarn then the gaps would be proportionately bigger. I decided to just make a scarf that would be longer and wider than a piano keyboard but would have the right proportions. The second piece is destined to become part of a cover for a digital piano and with that I’m going to sett it at 15 epi and generate a keyboard that’s the right size and stiff as a board. It would have been nice to have woven the first piece at the right sett and got a scarf the same size as a keyboard but I’m all about using what I have where I can.

I’m still not knitting, this week while not knitting I’ve made another three hats and started a pair of socks. The four hats and the piano scarf weigh more than the cone of black I bought to make the scarf so I’m still on target with my stashbusting exercise. I also whipped up a little sleeveless number in blue, when I cast on it was going to be a sweater but the more I thought about it the more I realised that getting those long spindly arms into sleeves was going to be more trouble than it was worth. Having no shoulders and your chin lower than your arms does pose some interesting fitting challenges. He needs a hat and possibly a scarf but I can slack off for the moment as he’s nowhere to be seen and I can claim that I forgot all about him. At least the hat and scarf won’t be difficult to fit.

I might be on the brink of a return to the needles, we’re having some warm and sunny weather at the moment so why I should be thinking about cardigans is beyond me. I don’t know yet whether this is The One, the sign is when I start dreaming about it and I’m not there yet. It also depends on whether there’s enough of the Ryeland, the coloured bands can be larger but there’s a limit to how far you can stretch “not enough” yarn. I don’t know what colour the bands are or how they are worked, I’ve left that with my inner knitter to work out while I get on with other things. I haven’t thought about a collar or the bottom edges but just for once I know exactly what the buttons should look like. I’m not sure that buttons are the best place to start but I might well be building a cardigan around them.