How I propelled the Royals to the World Series through knitting and crochet AND HELPED THEM WIN

#ForeverRoyal #TakeTheCrown

I wear a lot of black and white clothing to work, since it's easy to mix and match. I have been wanting to add some jewel-toned scarves to the wardrobe to keep things interesting.

One of my favorite colors is blue. My husband is a Royals fanatic, and when baseball season began, I wanted to wear blue on game days to be supportive.

I went shopping at Jo-Ann for suitable yarn. I don't like acrylic because it makes me itch and gives me dry eyes and throat. The only non-acrylic royal blue yarn they had there were Deborah Norville Serenity Active and Patons Classic Wool Bulky. The Deborah Norville yarn is 70% polyester and 30% acrylic, so I settled for it and bought a couple of balls because it was cheap and machine washable. It's supposed to have wicking properties making it suitable for athletic wear.

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The first one I made was a single strand of this knit on US 50 35mm needles. This item did not survive. I started out by joining it into an infinity scarf, then decided I wanted it to be flat. In the process of unseaming, it began to unravel, so I ended up trashing it. The huge needles made a nice, airy fabric, and I intend to use this technique again.

I wanted something to wear right away so I grabbed a huge crochet hook and made this one in the round. I think it is a foundation chain of singles, a couple of rows of doubles, and it ends with either singles or slip stitches. I really don't remember. I didn't make it an even cylinder. After the first row of double crochets I stair-stepped it so that the back would stay short. It is really longer than in this picture, but the last time I wore it, I wanted it to be shorter, so it has a couple of little alligator hair clips folding the back on itself.

With the yarn I had left, I decided to make a keyhole scarf. I believe this is 24 stitches on size US 13 needles. I knitted it in linen stitch until it was the desired length. Then I wanted to try a keyhole technique I've seen in some patterns that involves knitting a stitch, placing the next on a holder, knitting the next, holding the next, until you're knitting half of the stitches and leaving the others on the holder.

I did 10 rows of garter stitch with the stitches that were on the needles. I should have stuck with linen stitch, but I didn't know how to get it going correctly when I was only knitting every other stitch to begin with. I cut the yarn and swapped the stitches on the needle for the ones on the holder.

I likewise knit 10 rows of garter stitch and returned the first tab piece to the needles. Then I knit in linen stitch until the part past the keyhole was the length I wanted. I didn't know how this would turn out when I started. You end up with an upper and lower layer, each shifted from the center. When you stick the scarf through the hole, the shift isn't outstanding.

My system worked so well that the Royals became the Central Division American League champions. I needed more blue stuff.

I have admired patterns like the one below for some time, and I wanted to make something with cables, since I hadn't done that before. I bought two balls of the Patons Classic Wool Chunky in Royal(s) Blue. The twists are nice and tight, perfect for patterns that require good stitch definition. This is also the first time I have knitted with wool, and I loved it. It's nice and springy.

This pattern is called Sulka Scarflette, free on Ravelry. http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/sulka-scarflette
I used their search filters to find one that uses bulky yarn and small yardage. This pattern has 16 cables on it. The first ball lasted through the 15th one. This is how it looked after knitting, before blocking. It only took a few hours.

After it was nice and dry and rectangular, I bought buttons for it. The pattern calls for 1" buttons and has buttonholes knit in. I couldn't find 1", only 1-1/8" buttons. They didn't really want to go through the keyholes without forcing, and I didn't want to hurt the scarf. I just sewed the buttons in place as if they had been buttoned already. When I wash it the first time, I will probably have to remove the buttons and block it flat again before reattaching them. It will always require hand washing and gentle treatment, to prevent felting.

I had most of the second ball left, and there was another pattern on Ravelry that looked like fun. It's the Angela Twist.
http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/angela-twist
You cast 7 stitches of super bulky yarn onto a US 15 double-pointed needle and knit a big fat i-cord. I used 13s, since my yarn was plain bulky. I don't have large DPNs, but all of my needles are circular, so you can just treat them like DPNs in this instance.

You knit to the desired length, about 42" in this case, form a circle in your hands with half of the length, and loop the remainder through the circle many times. then you sew the ends together and arrange your loops.

When completed, it was fat and fluffy and not quite as long as I wanted. I blocked it to transfer some of the thickness into length, and this is how it turned out. I made a little stockinette tab to wrap around the seam and hide it.

So now I am well equipped to make it through the Series! I've always knitted while Kent was watching the games, but now I am actually able to follow the action and have become a fan myself.

GO ROYALS! #TakeTheCrown