The scarf that travelled the world

in December 2006 Blaise approached me with a request to knit him a scarf. not any scarf, a scarf knitted with a binary pattern. he had found it off one of his sites and it came from a knitting website known affectionately as Knitty.

having just finished conquering the world of scarves (i had a made a few in a pattern i picked up on our honeymoon to NZ in 2005) i was keen to try it. It was knitting in the round and using two colours, both things i didn't know how to do so i was keen for both.

I foolishly promised it to him on his birthday of 2007. after all it didn't look that hard, it was a garter stitch (the simplest knitting stitch) the entire length. i could do that in my sleep.

the birthday came and went, then christmas, then the next birthday...yeah it was longer and harder than planned. I'd get into it for a month and make progress and then lose interest. it was hard, the knitting in the round was a struggle, i kept making mistakes in reading and replicating my pattern so i had to tear out a full row of binary and knit it again. for those of you saying, "why didn't you just leave it?", if you know me you know that's not going to happen.
it got heavy and in the summer in Canada i didn't want to knit it.

it became a bit of a joke, this big thick scarf which he was never going to get.
it travelled with us to NZ and same thing happened, i'd knit a bit and lose interest. but then something happened, i walked into a knitting shop and found another Canadian working there...yeah small world.

i explained the situation, hauled out the scarf and she promptly told me my needles were too freaking long, i needed a smaller round. i had to stretch and pull each stitch to knit, with a shorter round all the stitches were there at the tips of the needle ready to be knit. and with that i was back into it, i passed the halfway point on the scarf. i started down the 2nd side, even with the pattern now being knit upside down it was going fast and then (hallelujahs being sung) it was done...seriously?

i cast off and realized a) i was finished, b) it was huge.

The binary scarf December 19, 2006 - July 5, 2010 - HUZZAH!

my first model was accomodating but not thrilled.


my second model was much happier with his new scarf.

he hasn't translated the code yet, and yes there is a message in the binary, took me about a day to learn some form of binary (i'm not geeky enough to know what i learned but it was a binary alphabet of some sort). i'll keep you posted for when he does.