ideaphoria

SNOWVEMBER

Obligatory ironic photo showing our summer furniture after the recent snowstorm. Another snowstorm is on its way later today.

Snowvember. I didn't make that up; I heard it used by one of our local talk radio hosts. This kind of word, made by combining two words so that the new word contains the meaning of both components, is called a portmanteau word. I love this kind of wordplay. Mark Twain used a lot of portmanteau words in Huckleberry Finn, and I used to teach that novel when I taught high school English. And so what we're experiencing now in our neck of the woods is a snowy November - or, Snowvember. And this concludes your English lesson for today, Dear Reader.

Think of snow, and one might think of avalanches. And one might associate avalanches with avalanche yarn. At our Feral Knitters gathering last week on Monday, Andrea had done what you wouldn't think possible -- she'd knitted some Fair Isle sweaters using this chunky rug yarn.

Andrea, seated, and Ryan, standing. Each is holding a kid-sized sweater with Fair Isle motifs and a shawl collar that Andrea knitted from avalanche yarn. The hats they are wearing, also knitted from avalanche yarn, were made by Feralites Peggy and/or Rebecca. You wouldn't think avalanche yarn would lend itself to the delicacy of Fair Isle work, but Andrea was there to show us it can be done.

At Ferals last week I was casting on for a new project. I've been commissioned to knit a scarf for a young man in college. He has a wool allergy, so I've chosen to work with the cottony goodness of Rowan Calmer:

I'm using the colors Coffee Bean and Licorice Onyx. The black yarn has a bit of a sheen to it, and is just the shade that licorice is. Every stitch that I knit, I'm thinking "licorice and coffee, licorice and coffee." I even ran out to the store (before the snowstorm) and bought myself a big bag of licorice. I'm staying pretty well caffeinated while working on this project, too.

I can no more take credit for the scarf design than I can for coining the word Snowvember. This is the "Sasha" scarf from the book Rowan Junior. I've always loved the striping sequence of this scarf -- it has these graduated stripes at each end, and the center is one long section of main color -- and so I'm tickled to have this opportunity to knit it. The Calmer yarn that I'm using knits at a finer gauge than the original yarn in the pattern, so I've increased the stitch count. Funny thing about this ribbed scarf: when the ribs hang together as in the picture above, the scarf looks about 6 inches wide, but when you stretch it, it goes to 10 inches wide. I like scarves that compress around the neck like this. I hope the intended recipient likes it, too.

Posted by Karen at November 29, 2006 11:41 AM