The Earth Stripe Wrap (ESW) has whizzed along, despite me having my attention diverted by the Petal Bib and the green Snuzzle Scarf!

I reached the pattern decreed length of 148cm – Phew. Two full pattern repeats and another 60 rows.

Hmmmm….Yarn amounts are an annoyance again. To get to the 148cm point, I’ve had to buy third, extra ball, of shade 589 – Majestic (a mousey grey/beige colour) and have used at least a third of it. I haven’t touched the second ball of shade 582 – Trance (bright teal blue). Trance is used in the crochet edging so I will probably need that if I stick to the pattern but frankly, I would have preferred to use a different colour (that I have plenty left over of) and save adding another ball to my already obese KSH stash 😯

This is the beast so far..

I tried the lovely creature on – it is beautiful- but somehow it’s not long enough – it’s just a personal preference – I really feel the cold… 😐

I wanted something to really wrap around me – it’s ok but feels a little stingy and like it would be a pain to keep in place when flung casually over over my shoulder. No problem, lots of yarn left – I’ll just knit it longer…

…but how much yarn will the tassels take? I suspected that they eat up the yarn. The last thing I wanted to do was have to skimp on the tassels because I’d made the wrap longer.

Seemed obvious to me – make all the tassels now, then continue knitting till I’m happy or I run out of yarn!

The pattern says to make the tassels “in the same colour combinations” as the wrap. Not easy when faced with 182 rows of differing combinations. I decided to follow the pattern exactly and have double strands following the row by row changes of colour combinations.

To make the lengths 50cm long – I looked out a book of about 25cm height…A History of Handknitting by Reverend Richard Rutt fitted the bill perfectly!

This is a fascinating book as well as a good “tasselification tool”. Quite scholarly but packed with useful knitterly facts, technical information and historical and social details. It covers from the earliest ancient knitting to modern day – worth reading if you can get a copy. My copy is from the late ’80s so the cover has changed!

How about that picture of the Author – the Bishop of Leicester!

Now the tassely sums….

• I needed 8 strands in each tassle – that’s 4 rows of doubled KSH. (Phew – I’m a maths genius 😛 )
• I needed 36 tassles at each end.
• 36 tassles x 4 rows each = 144 rows of the pattern I had to wrap round the book.
• I had to do that twice – one set for each end.

And the method…

• Make two, 4 row tassels at a time in the same colour combination – you need one for each end!
• hold the desired colours together and wrap once around the book for each row, on the left of the book
• do the same on the right of the book
• if there are several rows the same, keep wrapping.
• when you have 4 rows worth (8 strands) in each “bunch”, cut through the yarn at the point you started (I always started at the bottom)
• You’ll end up with this…

What to do with all these lengths of yarn so they don’t tangle into a rats’ nest?

I looped them onto two spare knitting needles, putting one of each colour on each needle, using the normal knot for a scarf tassle – the Larks Head Knot. Bet you didn’t know that had a name huh? 😛

I ended up with this…

Much fun has been had with these, they appear to be irresistible to anyone who sees them. Wigs and Hawaiian skirts are the favourite witty japes 😉 Thug and Mewsley are the only ones who, strangely, seem disinterested!

On with knitting another mile of ESW…