“When Loving is our day & our night”

The inspiration for this scarf came from a song by Scott Makeig, and this is my favorite line of it “when loving is our day and our night”. That would make life so much more beautiful.

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The ‘Real I’ scarf in black & white

This is another knit I wanted to do for a long time. So I am going through my ‘bucket knit list’.
It’s double knit, from neck down, then picked up the sts and double knit the other side.

The image is Meher Baba’s hand writing of the word “I”.

Size: approx. 30 sts, 9.5” wide.

 

 

 

 

* Apologies for the advertisement below.

Mehera’s

“Mehera’s” is what I call this style of scarves:

They are knit double stranded with one variegated and one very soft yarn,

needles # US 13, with 18 or 20 or 22 sts, in rib 1:1,

and knit one below, which makes them wonderful and soft.

It takes a little planing in advance (to learn more look at Laura Bryant about yarn repetitions),

but after that it’s just knit and see what the yarn is doing.

 

* Apologies for any hideous advertisement that may be added below – I’m really sorry!

All of Me, scarf

‘All of Me’ is the name I give the projects containing Meher Baba’s symbols. Apart for the box and hats, here are some scarves versions. The images are simplified versions of Meher Baba Samadi, the threshold, Mastery in servitude, and Baba’s hand writing of the word ‘I’.

I just LOVE knitting these patterns.

Knit-wise: knitted in a mixture of double stranded, st.st, and double knit. I use needles # 13US, and let the sts be very loose. The scarves are very big, almost a mini blanket.

Below 2 sides of the first rainbow scarf:

2 sides of the second:

And 2 more scarves:

 

 

 

Knitting the air/the in-between

Sometimes I like to knit not the object itself, but just the air around it.

Below is a ‘treeless’ rendering (left side) of the tree on the right. I avoided knitting the branches, and just knit the shapes around them (much as possible).

The two bellow are done with a similar idea, treating the shapes as abstract and mixing the negative and positive images:

 

Back to the top of the page, these are 2 scarves with Meher Baba’s signature:

I used 2 colors, one for the shapes created below the signature, and one for ‘the air above it’. This is about how His signature cuts the space. The scarf starts with the M itself as part of the inc.

 

 

 

The 4th Reflection

(sometimes big is fun:).

The 4th reflection is a med size scarf. It has the images, but not their reflections, and a chain of hearts all around its edges.

It was knitted in a mixture of st.st and double knit. I kept the back very tidy so it can be used too.

Knitted sideways with 2 variegated yarns.

 

 

Rainbow poem, 7 steps.

This scarf is a continuation of rainbow poem shawls. The name I call it for short is Karma. It has 7 squares, symbolising our journey towards God:

• Starting with all colors, as I believe we have everything in us from birth. The first step has more red, to symbolise more earthiness, attachments, me mine & I. And very little sky blue, which symbolises God.
• The second step has more orange, and no red, To symbolise loosing the heavy sanskaras/karma, and moving more towards light.
• The last step is all sky blue and is knitted in only one direction: UPWARD! There is no confusion/sidesteping.

It took me 5 tries to get the look that gives what I mean. This is the last and finished one:

Knitwise: start with all yarns, metered/modular knitting, and loose a yarn/color each step.

If you are interested in the pattern (knit or crochet ) let me know.

Here is the front and back side:

and here are some of the previous attempts:

 

and another:

 

 

Yarn Play – free knit pattern

This pattern is available as a free download

This is a fun & easy way to work with color: it’s not exactly intarsia, nor stranding.
Start with 5 yarns and drop them in place as you CO.
Continue by playing with the yarns as you knit, moving them here and there to your heart’s delight.
Then, pick up all the yarns as you BO to create the fringe on the other side.
In the end, there is no finishing work to do,
no tails to weave in, just comfortably snuggling into it.

• THERE IS NO NEED TO STRAND or TWIST YARNS,
instead use the ds st is a color switching point. After knitting it, you have a choice between 2 colors: would you like to continue with this yarn or the other? That’s what gives the freedom and ease of color in this pattern.
The more freely you use this ability to switch color at a whim, the more fun and unique your shawl will be.

I made it into shawls and scarves, but it is perfect for a pet blanket or lapghan/afghan.

Beginner: just do it all in garter st and don’t worry.
Advanced: use it as a base to do different patterns on.

Magic sts

Recently I’ve been playing with 2 ways that make color knit (and crochet) easier, and also eliminate the need for finishing work at the end:

MULTI ST  is knitted with all the yarns held together. I use it at one edge of the knitting (but plan to try it in the middle too). At the beg. of a row, I can choose any yarn I want from my multi, and knit 2 or more rows with it.  I can hide a certain yarn for half a shawl, and then – pop it out of thin air! I can knit a 2 color pattern (mosaic, sl st etc), and then move to 2 totally different colors without any effort. I can use gradual color change, or rainbow, like this: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Purple, Blue, Sky blue, and back to Red, or, instead of Red I can retrace and follow the Sky blue with, Blue, Purple, Green, Yellow, Orange, Red.

I avoid finishing work by letting the yarn be as and where it needs to. The easiest is to start and finish with a multi st, and use the yarn tails as a fringe.

The other trick is similar, but the sts is only double stranded, and used as a border between 2 bordering yarns. That eliminates the need to twist/cross. strand etc. I use this st in the middle of the fabric, as it’s not needed in the edge (that will make it a multi st, even if it’s just 2 yarns). To enhance it, I always knit it as st.st even in garter st knitting. It makes it bold and textured.

So, here are examples of using the multi st (see it on the side, in the asymmetric  Karma shawl):

 

The ds st:

Few more examples:

 

 

Rainbow Poem Shawls

The rainbow poem is a series of showy shawls/scarves,

with little variations in how they look and how they are knit.

It is still work in progress, but the first 2 are ready as a pattern.

Rainbow poem. Mild.

Photo above and below, knitted with 5 yarns. Starting at one tip with all yarns, knitting them together through the whole piece, and finishing at the other tip with all 5 together. This shawl has a lot of sweetness to it, and sits beautifully on the back.

See more details here.

 

Above, the pattern is called “Rainbow poem. Wild”.

These shawls are bigger, knitted from side to side like the Mild version, but with 7 yarns and a different stripe width.

For more details, look here.

 

 

The third is called: “Rainbow poem. Landscape”. It is the easiest one to knit as it is knitted upward, starting with one yarn and adding one more with each stripe. It’s size is L-XL, and the pattern will be ready in 2-3 weeks.

 

The forth is “The bird of paradise”, and its the most complicated one:

 

And I’m ashame to say that I have few more version of it that I would like to try… Oh dear!