Making the Victoria Park Scarf

Totally thrilled to be able to share this project with you. It’s been a long time coming due to all the moving house stuff and partly because this project is just EPIC! If you follow me, you will know that over the last few winters I have been learning how to do fairisle knitting and have completed a few projects now starting with Marie Wallin’s Sycamore arm warmers and Rowan cowl and then the beautiful Scout Shawl by Florence Spurling. However, the Victoria Park scarf by Dee Hardwicke is quite an undertaking and I am so delighted to have finished it. I’m considering it a piece of art really. I mean you can hang it anywhere in your house and it is just fabulous and you can wear it and feel like a million dollars too.

In reality it has taken me a year to complete and at times I have felt like putting it aside and casting on something else, but I am proud of myself for resisting the temptation and in part this is because of moving. What I realised is what an overwhelming amount of fabric I had amassed over 10 years and I certainly don’t want to do that with knitting yarn. It is easy to just get tempted to buy yarn for gorgeous projects you see as kits or just delicious hand dyed skeins with no particular plan in mind and I absolutely, catergorically must not start with this!!!! So I have stuck at it and in truth it has been a great portable project to carry around and just pick up and put down in between packing, stressing, travelling and house viewings. I suppose this is why knitting is appealing to me more and more - you can just take it anywhere and knit a few rows here or there and it is not bulky or difficult to transport. Nevertheless, can I just say, you need some sticking power and patience to finish this.

To begin with it was one of the those projects ‘see it, want it, make it’ on instagram. I mean it was just so beautiful in Dee Hardwicke’s posts and as fairisle knitter who has finally progressed from beginner to intermediate it always had the feel of upping my game. I chose to stick to the colour scheme in the pattern and bought rowan felted tweed yarn. It was expensive for sure, which makes committing all the more necessary. .

As it is knitted in the round it is fairly straight forward. I would absolutely recommend marking the four sections for the trees with stitch markers and I was especially thrilled with these gorgeous embroidered ones that I got from bobblesandberries.com They are lightweight and just so pretty. I got the autumn leaves set because it was autumn when I began this project but Aude has so many different sets to pick from.

In part what I have liked about this pattern is that it is in basically 4 sections and so if you do make a mistake you are never going to have to unpick to much! As the scarf grew I was a bit concerned about how thick it is because basically you knit a long tube and then sew up the top and the bottom so a double thickness of double knit is quite chunky. On the other hand the project is exactly as Dee Hardwicke describes it ‘a rich tapestry like look’.

As fairisle knitting is still relatively new to me, I really enjoy seeing how the colours and patterns work out. This scarf certainly has a magical flavour to it with whimsically coloured trees and trellis like patterns.

As the project grew, I loved the medieval tapestry like look of the scarf and it really started to feel as if it was going to be something rather special. I did decide that the middle row of trees would be dark raspberry pink rather than just all blue and I do like how this turned out. It is very eye-catching and cosy and kept me interested and focussed.

Once the trees were all done, the rest of the scarf in the pattern is just plain yellow and green fairisle and I set off on this thinking it might be quick. I confess it did start to drag a little and this was where I had to force myself to work on it a little each day rather than getting distracted with another project.

As I was knitting I wondered about doing a section in the raspberry pink again and then I thought about putting a row of trees along the bottom edge.

I decided ultimately to try and reverse the tree chart and work it upside down so the that trees at both ends are standing up (I hope that makes sense). I thought about it a lot - especially at the beach while I continued with the yellow and green fairisle.

So I finally decided on a row of pink trees and a blue border to contrast the two ends. I was more than a little anxious that I had calculated correctly that I needed to reverse the chart and work it from the top of the tree to the bottom. It worked out just beautifully though and honestly I am so glad I did this.

This project has kept me company through six months of displacement and moving around and now that we have finally moved into our forever home by the sea, it is a testament to those days, when so much uncertainty and decision making caused lots of ups and downs. It will be perfect for chilly autumn days by the sea and winter walks when the wind blows and the frosts sparkle. It has marked a turning point too in my knitting journey and I feel confident to tackle almost any colour work project in the future. I plan to use the left over yarn to make a beret and fingerless mitts to complete the set, so do look out for those on my instagram.

The pattern for this scarf is available on Dee Hardwicke’s Etsy site here and I strongly recommend following her on Instagram for a daily dose of gorgeousness.

My new sewing room is just about ready now, so I’ll be posting about that soon and some new sewing projects that I’m working on too.