There. That oughta do it.)
Approximately 11ty years ago, I made the mistake of asking my dad what he would like me to knit for him. This came about, first and foremost, because I make bad decisions. The secondary reason is that I had knit my dad a few things I had rarely seen him use, so I didn't want to waste any more time knitting things to line his dresser drawers or keep his guitar necks warm or whatever.
He told me what he wanted, and I quickly tossed his idea out as impossible and knit him a hat instead.
The good news is, he really liked the hat. The bad news is, he still wanted that other thing.
The "thing" in question is a guitar strap. I had numerous reasons for immediately discounting this idea:
Guitar straps are designed to hold the guitar in front of you at the exact height at which is comfortable for you to play the guitar. This can vary, which is why guitar straps are usually adjustable. Wool is stretchy--if you hang a guitar from a scrap of wool, it's going to stretch out, and ultimately the stretched yarn will break, the scrap will unravel and your guitar will wind up on the floor, where it's much harder to play.
Guitar straps have, for lack of a better term, doohickeys on either end to attach them to the guitar. Fashioning doohickeys out of wool would be difficult at best, and sounded like a recipe for more guitar-on-the-floor disasters.
The guitar strap in question was supposed to be colorful. This sounded to me like striping, which I loathe.
Guitar straps are boring. They're just skinny scarves. Zzzzzzz.
Still, I'm pretty fond of my dad, and also I really hate to disappoint people, so I kept the idea in the back of my mind, trying to piece together a way to make it work. And eventually, I had a brain wave.
I could purchase a sturdy nylon guitar strap (WITH doohickeys), and knit a cover for it.
And to mitigate the boredom factor, I could liven it up with some fair isle.
So, that's just what I'm doing:
I'm using the charts from the Ultimate Stashbuster Vest, and picked out some blues and browns I thought were more "my dad." If I'm lucky, I'm about 1/4 done. (And unfortunately this is the one gift that needs to be done, wrapped and ready to gift on Christmas EVE so I can give it to dad to use for mass. So, in news that should come as a surprise to no one, I really should've started this thing much earlier.)
This isn't a bad first fair isle project--there's no shaping, no worries about long floats getting caught on anything, certainly no steeking. It's just one long tube.
But there are a LOT of ends. A lot. A million. My original plan was to finish, turn the whole thing inside out and spend a day weaving them all in, but this weekend I decided on a different approach where I knit a few inches, then turn the top inside out and weave. I think this might save my sanity if and when the whole project is complete.
13 days 'til Christmas!
2 comments :
If you knit it as a tube, can't you just leave most of the ends inside without too much weaving? Looks great by the way!
Hmmm... I've been asked to weave a bass strap. Knitting it sounds like such a great idea!
Post a Comment