Here's yet another Spontaneous Scarf - this one done in various Easter egg dyed yarns and made narrow for my best friend's daughter who wears a lot of scarves. To make a Spontaneous Scarf (from a recent issue of Spin-Off), simply cast on as many stitches as you want it long, then seed stitch each row with a different yarn and leave about 8" of yarn tails on each edge for fringe. This is a nice frugal method of knitting - you can use up all those extra pieces of fancy yarns or weirdly handspun or dyed stuff in your scarf creations. You can use any weight yarn (although I do double lace weight) and a larger (7 US & up) needle.









Here's the inside of the tam - I think I like the colors better inside because the darker colors predominate.

Our local nonprofit rescue group, a satellite of the national House Rabbit Society, now has an online store and all profits from the items sold go directly to the care and rescue of pet rabbits in Colorado and New Mexico. Our sweet extra-large rabbit Peaches (adopted from one of Four Corners Bunnies rescuers) is lending her beautiful image to some of the items.



So if you'd like a Peaches mousepad, mug, journal, calendar, bag or t-shirt, please go to http://www.cafeshops.com/4cornersbuns and help out abused and abandoned rabbits at the same time. We also have items with the two beautiful southwestern-style logos seen here.

















In a similar rescue fundraising effort, I am going to write up some color knitting patterns in a small Cafepress spiral-bound booklet. The charts inside will be black and white but I'll get a color photo with all the items on it for the cover. (Actually I don't like color charts anyway - I find them annoying when I substitute different colors.)



I'll try to keep the booklet inexpensive and will include lots of tips on color knitting. I should have approximately 5-6 patterns for small items (socks, mittens, gloves, hats, bag, etc.) for publication by the beginning of summer. All money from the sale of the booklet will go to Four Corners Bunnies.

Here's the tam. After much wringing of my hands, I have decided I like the colors after all. I originally collected 16 colors of Shetland yarn but only used about half of those. I wanted to do some sort of a water theme and added anchors on the bottom and a pattern that looks like waves around the rim of the top. The charts are from the McGregor fair isle book.



I used the Starmore chart on her designing your own tam article in Threads for the top decreases. That is a terrific resource for designing your own tam but I greatly dislike the specific double decreases used - SL 1, K2TOG, PSSO . The end result is kind of a feathery looking stitch which you can see if you look at the very center of the tam. I'll try to get a picture of this being worn so you can see it in all its glory. I look really stupid wearing it though so I may rope someone else into modeling it.



I can really see how tams can be addictive. They are such a fun way to play with color and patterns and this definitely won't be my last one.



Go HERE to see a photo of many of the tams made for the Asoflives Tamalong. They're like knitted jewels, aren't they?