Manly Neckwarmer

This is my entry for the =dAKnitters 'Knitting on a Budget' contest: behold! The idea is to make something delicious for under $9, and show your budget. I'm also supposed to have taken pictures of the materials before I start, but, er... I forgot. So pretend there's a picture of some white fluff and a couple little plastic tubs, k?

Scrunchy neckwarmers like this are really handy, and I've wanted to make one for a while. The problem is, all the interesting patterns out there are extremely feminine, and frankly even a plain one tends to look girly if the yarn's not exactly right. So I set out to design one from the ground up, so to speak, and I think I got it just right.

I soaked the roving in vinegar solution, painted it with concentrated dye stock, and steamed it, which got me these nice deep colors with very little dye. I spun a fine single and plied it from both ends to get that converging/diverging overlap of colors. And then I just knit a tube as if for a hat, but instead of decreasing I kept going until the yarn ran out. It's just k1p1 all the way up; all the thought and effort went into the design stage, and the knitting stage was a no-brainer.

1 oz wool/mohair roving from Sheep Shed Studio: about $2
Wilton's Icing Dye: about $1 worth
Ordinary vinegar: let's call it $.05 worth
Total cost: about $3.05