Lace-weight yet masculine

maxbox511 wrote

on Oct 21, 2008 5:42 PM

I wanted to make a mens scarf that was perfect: lightweight, warm, soft, sturdy--and for lack of a better word, masculine!

Here's how I did it. The scarf is two shades of brown: milk chocolate and dark chocolate, a lot like the coat I wear it with. It's made of rows of sc, dc, fpdc, and bpdc to give it an interesting pattern of lines and some texture. I didn't write down the pattern, and I wouldn't make it the same way again--it was a bit haphazard, but hey, it worked!

So my first tip: A dark color and a simple, subtle striped pattern can make a scarf masculine, even though it is crocheted out of lace-weight yarn.

The rest of the adjectives come from mixing a lace weight alpaca/silk yarn (the lighter brown) with a black mercerized cotton crochet thread (#10). I really like this combination--it's strong but lightweight, very soft and surprisingly warm for how light it is! Alpaca is a great fiber; the only problem is it doesn't always hold its shape well. But the cotton crochet thread will do that, as well as darkening some of the stripes.

This is my second tip: Mix alpaca yarns with cotton thread! The cotton doesn't add much weight, but it will hold the shape so the alpaca doesn't have to. And you can use the cotton thread to make subtle changes to the color as a bonus!