I have already mentioned the Widening Gyre scarf in a previous post.  The pattern is now ready to go for tech editing and I’ll hopefully have it ready for testing in a week.  It was one of those projects that sort of get going when I have just finished a major piece of work and in the pre-start lull and the experimental swatching of another.  I had some undyed merino from Blue Faced, the retail outlet for Chester Wool Co.  It’s non-superwash merino and at £5 a 100g hank a real bargain.  I had recently read something about the construction of a spiral scarf or wrap.  Essentially you increase the stitch count on one edge only of each row, right and wrong sides and then after a specified number of increases, you cast off a proportion of them at the non-increase end.

In order to make the spiral work properly you really need to ensure that your increases and decreases are in a Fibonacci ratio.  So the first few of the sequence are: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13.  If you use a multiple of two of the consecutive higher numbers, then you’ll get a good spiral.  I have a few favourite lace type stitches and I did start off with a bamboo lace that I used for the Bretton Bamboo (pattern still being written!).  This didn’t really work out so I changed to a simple single eyelet row.  I framed this row with a reverse stocking stitch, in a similar way to the Perivale Wrap.  And there it was, emerging.  I was happy.  I decided to stop when the yarn ran out.  So it’s a single skein item and as it’s merino is lovely and soft to go next to your skin.

I had no idea what to call it.  I am frequently in this position.  In fact I have a series of hats coming out called Hat#01, Hat#02.  I had spent an hour on Ravelry trying to find a name that fitted the hat and wasn’t already in use.  I decided my time could be better spent so Hat #01 it was.  For this however, I thought of winding gyre – and google produced an alternative of Widening Gyre, being a quote from the W B Yeats poem, The Second Coming.  I am more than happy with that and so that is its name.  

Available for testing in a week or so. 🙂