Back in October, when I began working on Christmas scarves, I asked Mitchell if he wanted a scarf for Christmas, too. He said yes in a somewhat non-committal way. When I asked him what kind of scarf he wanted, he said with focus and finality that he wanted a 'One Ring' scarf. Of course, I knew he was talking about Tolkien's Hobbit/Lord of the Rings, but I wasn't sure what he thought such a scarf would look like. I asked him, and he didn't know, either. I put it under my thinking cap, and I left it alone for a little while.
I brought up the scarf a few times over the next few weeks, but he didn't change his tune. I started asking him about what it would look like. I had a picture in my mind of a gold ring embroidered near one hem. Later, I moved on to thinking of words like, "One Ring To Rule Them All" worked into the design in some sort of Fair Isle, but I didn't like the idea of the long floats on the back of a scarf.
"The Hobbit" describes the history of all the rings, ruled by the One Ring:
Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
After some musing and not really coming up with a solution, I decided to search Ravelry and see if there was anything out there that would help. I was rewarded by finding Diana Stafford's "One Ring Scarf" design. She charted the inscription from the One Ring, the bolded words above,... in the original Elven version, of course. The inscription was given by Tolkien in artwork in the book:
The pattern design used "double-knitting" for the scarf (solving the float problem). Of course, that takes twice as many stitches, worked at the same time...
I showed Mitchell the design, and he thought it was perfect. I agree it was perfect... aside from the fact that it was an incredibly pain-staking undertaking. It had six pages in the chart!
Even after taking ten stitches out of the width of the chart (by reducing the length of the "tails" on the script), it has over 44,000 stitches in it!
While my first reaction was, "You have got to be kidding me," I really have a terrible time telling the little guy, "No."
After all, I offered him a scarf...
I didn't complete it in time for Christmas, but I did get it done by the last day of the year, ready for Mitchell to wear when he goes back to school, next week. I included his name (and my initials and the year) in order to help him get it back if he leaves it anywhere.
It is my first double-knitting project, and I had to do some research on how to proceed. I included the double-knitting tips I used on my Ravelry Project Page.
Happy Knitting,
Lisa Kay
The pattern design used "double-knitting" for the scarf (solving the float problem). Of course, that takes twice as many stitches, worked at the same time...
I showed Mitchell the design, and he thought it was perfect. I agree it was perfect... aside from the fact that it was an incredibly pain-staking undertaking. It had six pages in the chart!
Even after taking ten stitches out of the width of the chart (by reducing the length of the "tails" on the script), it has over 44,000 stitches in it!
While my first reaction was, "You have got to be kidding me," I really have a terrible time telling the little guy, "No."
After all, I offered him a scarf...
I didn't complete it in time for Christmas, but I did get it done by the last day of the year, ready for Mitchell to wear when he goes back to school, next week. I included his name (and my initials and the year) in order to help him get it back if he leaves it anywhere.
It is my first double-knitting project, and I had to do some research on how to proceed. I included the double-knitting tips I used on my Ravelry Project Page.
Happy Knitting,
Lisa Kay
Comments