The Snowman's Scarf Done (except for fringe)

The photo above shows the scarf finished on the snowman and the background begun. First, the scarf.

With the snowman canvas turned so his scarf was at the bottom (and his stocking cap at the top) I did rows of reverse skip tent in my count/color sequence of 5 pale rose, 3 red, 7 lime green and 1 blue. I started with the knot at the front and did that in mostly lime green because that was the color I wanted in front. Remember, a scarf wrapped around your neck won't have the pattern continue in a regular manner (that's one thing I might have done to the Joan Thomasson wizard's robes, made the pattern irregular to mimic the folds in the long robes). So you are free to play around with your starting point doing Chottie's Plaid. That will make the scarf look more real.

Once I finished I outlined the scarf ends and knots with buttonhole stitch except for the line dividing the two scarf ends which is stem stitch. I turned the canvas so that the stocking cap was on the bottom to stitch that line and discovered buttonhole stitch done upside down is stem stitch. Or something. It isn't buttonhole! But it looks ok, particularly since it is not the bound-off knit sides of the scarf, so I left it alone. Mistakes aren't necessarily disasters, you know.

I've now started the background of the ornament using Caron's Snow, which is a chainette type thread that comes in a ton of colors these days. The white is perfect for Snow, but some of the other colors are very pretty. It's an easy metallic to work with but you need to use short lengths as the chainette will start to unravel after a while, especially since I'm using Interlocking Goblein for the stitch which means the thread goes down between threads which stresses it. I also experimented with switching to tent stitch so that there is a raised border and then a less prominent background but I'm not sure I like it. I'll think about that for a bit and continue the miles of tent stitches around the wizard's perimeter instead.

Eventually I'll create fringe for the scarf's ends but that has to wait until the background is done. Looking at the photo I posted, I see I forgot to outline the second lime green knot on the scarf. Maybe I'll do that next.

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