I am not generally one for novelty yarns – sure they made me giddy inside as a new knitter, but as I progressed I became interested in showing off my work more than hiding it in fringe, eyelashes, bobbly bits, etc. However, when a friend of mine who owns a craft store brought in a tantalizing sample of Creative Can Can by Rico Design I was intrigued.
Visions of whipping out fabulous swishy scarves with a minimum of effort danced in my head. I pictured my cold necked friends, long deprived of hand knit scarves, wondering how I managed such a complex looking scarf and nominating me for knitting sainthood, while I scuffed my shoe and humbly told them it was worth it for them.
Remember in my Don’t Take My Needles Away post I said I took a scarf to Croatia? Well, this is the scarf I took. So, it might have been the fact that I was freezing, hacking on second hand smoke while listening to Croatian techno music and choking on hooch from a Coke bottle foisted on me by the “tour guide” while trapped on a dilapidated boat in the middle of the Adriatic that made the sting of disappointment so keen as I realized that this wasn’t going to be the quick and easy scarf I dreamed of.
I thought it would be a simple matter of knitting the scarf and then fluffing out the ruffles. To my chagrin, I discovered that you must open/unfurl (for lack of a better word) the yarn and carefully knit into the top edge of the yarn placing each stitch about 4 centimeters or 1.5 inches apart. Basically, I haven’t knit this slow since my beginning days of knitting. See pictures below:
Unfurling the yarn before knitting.
Knitting into the top edge of the yarn.
Other challenges: Several times I had to untwist the yarn (and I’m not talking one or two twists either), but I’m not sure if that was caused by user error, I’ll let you know if/when I work up the other two balls I bought. Also, at one point the ribbon tore, the top edge separating from the rest, so I had to break the yarn and start again, lest the whole thing unravel. I think my talon-like thumbnail was the culprit as I tried to find a quicker way to open the yarn.
In the end it took me probably six hours to finish the scarf – my dreams of a quick scarf were dashed on the cruel rocks of reality.
Don’t get me wrong, the finished scarf is full of fun, fabulous frippery. And if you don’t go into it with the expectations I had (which, now you won’t, because you know what to expect) you can’t be disappointed.
But I wonder, can you really tell that it’s hand knit?
Completed Creative Can Can Scarf
Technical details:
Each 200g ball of Rico Design Creative Can Can yarn will make a good sized scarf. The yarn is made out of acrylic and the yarn band has instructions for knitting the scarf I knit. I followed them exactly, down to the 7 cast on stitches (which, interestingly isn’t done with a traditional cast on, but by inserting the needle through the yarn at the top edge). I used 7 mm knitting needles. The scarf can be washed on permanent press, cold. Lay flat to dry. Do not tumble dry, dry clean, or iron.
I am curious to hear what you think about this yarn. If you’ve given it a try, leave a comment and let me know what you thought. 🙂
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