Pidge - 99% natural & 100% handmade

A pidge is a short scarf closed with two buttons and it was the perfect project for my handspun corriedale. (see Spinning). I wanted to use a natural dye for this project so I tea dyed 203 yards with an entire box of Twinings Blackcurrent tea.





I was also trying to make all the components of the pidge natural and handmade, including the buttons and I was inspired by this idea for handmade wooden buttons. We have 3 oak trees and 2 maples on our little suburban yard so finding branches to experiment with wasn't difficult. Hubby helped by cutting the branches and played around with sawing them at varying angles. I didn't like the idea of using oil on an object that is going to be used on a garment so I deviated at this point from the original tutorial. To finish the buttons I applied stain and polyurethane. My daughter Sarah pointed out that I lost the ability to call it 100% "natural" when I used the polyurethane. She's right. I should have used shellac. Oh well, it'll have to be 99% natural and 100% handmade!






To begin the scarf, the number of stitches to cast-on must be a multiple of 4 plus 1 and the pattern for each row is a simple *K2,P2*, repeating *to* and ending with a K1. Knit until you reach approximately 2" from the desired length. Make 2 buttonholes of appropriate size for your chosen buttons and knit an additional 2".

My inconsistently handspun yarn, filled with slubs and many thick and thin areas knit easily and beautifully into a pidge!

Notes:

Size 6 needles and 29 stitches.

The finished scarf measures 24½" long and 4½" wide.

For a nice finished edge I slipped the last stitch of each row purlwise.