Step 0: Who's Lilium?
Short answer: They're the person in the corner of the screen. I'm going to ramble about them a bit, so skip to Step 1 if you're just here for knitting crimes.
Lilium Delphil is a former DND character that I threw into their own story. They're a trashbag half-elf weirdo that switched places with their twin to meet the other side of their family. If you can imagine "The Parent Trap" but with more gender mismatches and religious angst, you'd get something pretty close to their story.
Lilium and their twin
As a child, their grandma tried to keep them out of trouble by teaching them how to knit. It didn't work, but it did give them a hobby. They've always got knitting supplies on them, and their trademark is a very long, very colorful scarf. They've been working on it since they were a kid; whenever they start to get too stressed, they'll hole up somewhere and add another few rows.
I'm probably never going to write their story. But their scarf is cool, so I'm going to try to knit that.
Step 1: The basics
If I wanted to be authentic, I would've started the scarf with no experience. I don't want it to fall apart on me, though. So step 1 was buying the cheapest supplies I could find (9mm needles and a ball of crappy yarn), watching a few YouTube videos, and trying to follow along.
My first attempt was, uh... I think I started with 40 stitches per row? That's way too wide. Don't make a scarf that wide unless you're knitting with, like, lace yarn. Even then, it's probably a bad idea.
Second attempt: 20 stitches per row, the easiest stitch I knew, until I ran out of yarn. It ended up just long enough to go around my neck with a bit of a tail. When I sewed the 40-per-row attempt onto the end, it was long enough to go around my neck twice, or once with a decent tail in the front and back. It was supposed to be a knit stitch, but it looks like I managed to purl stitch the whole thing, so... whoops?
Now I know how to cast on and off, do one (1) stitch, weave in the ends, and sew different patches of yarn together if need be. And I stopped adding or dropping stitches pretty quickly, which is what I needed to learn.
Step 2: Drafting
Honestly, before I start the actual scarf, I should probably figure out why the beta scarf came out purled instead of knitted. That's not supposed to happen, right? At least if I purl Lilium's scarf, the stripes will have straight-ish edges instead of zigzagged edges.
None of my art of them is consistent about the stripes. Even if it was, I want to use the same amount of each color, and their art usually favors the green, red, and blue. So I'll probably just wing the pattern. I'll need five colors:
- Red
- Purple
- Pale green
- Pale blue
- White
I'd also like the rows to increase in multiples of 2. So a small color block would be 4 rows, a medium block would be 8 rows, and a large block would be 16 rows. I think that'll give it variety without the sizes being too chaotic.
I'm not sure what type of yarn to get. I'd like to find something that doesn't itch and is machine washable, and I'll need to get some smaller knitting needles.
Lilium's scarf is long enough to go around their neck at least twice. The front end hangs down to their belt, and the back hangs down to about calf length. I have no idea how much yarn that'll take. So let's do some good old-fashioned bullshitting!
Step 2.1: I am not a mathmetician
My first scarf was a ball of thickish yarn on chunky needles. Not counting the botched 40-per-row, it made about 2 1/2 feet of scarf. Lilium's scarf will use the same row length, but thinner yarn and smaller needles, which should result in a shorter scarf. But I probably won't burn 25% of the yarn on stitch-counting errors.
For simplicity's sake, let's assume that a ball of yarn will generate 2 1/2 feet of scarf, or 1 SU (Scarf Unit).
To reach from the neck to the belt, the scarf will need 1 SU. Twice around the neck is another 2 SU. To fall from neck to midcalf is another 2 SU. That puts us at 5 SU, aka 5 yarn balls worth of scarf.
...Huh, that actually works with the five colors. I sure hope that math holds up to reality!
Addendum 2/16/23
I did not actually purl the scarf. The tutorial I was showing just didn't know the final knit stitch very well. Either that or I saw it and forgot that a knit stitch looks kind of lumpy. Also, 40 stitches per row would've been a normal number of stitches for lighter yarn & thinner needles.
Step 3: Hopefully this works
I bought the yarn and some new needles! My math probably will not hold up: The only yarns that came in the right colors were the big rolls of economy yarn, so now I have about a mile of yarn. (My starter ball of yarn was 100 meters; the new balls of yarn are 320 meters each. Whoops!)
I forgot how to cast on, so I had to go back to YouTube. Then I made the exact same mistake as last time and cast on too many stitches. Luckily, I caught it fast enough to just unravel it and start over. I think this means I'm technically on scarf #4.
This page will update whenever I work on the scarf.
