One of the items on my ‘to-do-list’ was to find a fairly simple, but ***stunning*** scarf to work on as my next project – we see so many scarves in the crochet world, I wanted to get in on the action but with a twist. And I certainly found that ‘twist’ with this beautiful open weave Hairpin lace scarf by bhooked.
The thick braid down the middle really caught my attention and had me ‘hooked’ from the start. Hairpin crochet is a brand-new technique to me, so read on for my journey through my first complete hairpin project…
The pattern actually calls for Red Heart’s ‘Unforgettable’ colour changing yarn, BUT I decided to use Cygnet’s Boho Spirit in ‘moonbeam’ for my scarf – I just loved the jewel colours and couldn’t resist popping it in my shopping basket some time ago. Check out my review of Cygnet’s Boho Spirit Yarn here.
The most important technique of this pattern is of course Hairpin Lace. You’ll be surprised how quickly you pick it up! The focus points are created entirely from the join and the strands of the main hairpin lace strips – the rest is good old basic crochet to add the extra width.
If you’re tempted to try your own scarf, do have a look at Bhooked’s website where you’ll find the pattern and lots of useful pointers on completing the pattern.
THE SCARF:
The first section of the pattern starts with the most exciting part! The hairpin strand itself! The work is fairly open, so it didn’t take long to start to see the effect and the knotwork of the spine starting to take shape.
The pattern suggests grouping the outer loops as you go along reducing the need for endless counting as you start to build up your loops so I started counting…and counting…it’s a long scarf
I started to squash as many loops onto my loom as possible – I’m a master at getting my yarn in a muddle and although some hairpin lace tutorials suggest you remove some of the loops when your loom is starting to get low on space, I just couldn’t face the thought of the work twisting with the working yarn as I went…it seemed to work fine for me, although it was pretty snug by the end.
Once I’d stitch marked my sections, I removed them from the loom. As you can see, I ran out of stitch markers, so I started using bows…it was a little fiddlier than the stitch markers but worked just as well.
Working the big braid down the middle to join each strip was my favourite part of the pattern – I’d lined up my strips so the contrasting colours were together wherever possible to create more colour impact and on each braid I straightened the loops so that they would lie flat in the braid with no twisting…needless to say, I dropped a stitch and had to work back to correct it…
The border is a return to standard crochet and builds up the rows of stitches to create the outer band and structure to the scarf which was needed because the hairpin section was quite flimsy.
And finally, the tassels! For the 6 tassels I used a tassel maker by clover which created beautiful uniform tassels in the different colours of the yarn. Like the hairpin strands, I tried to attach them with contrasting colours together for extra impact.
And ta-da! This is the finished project – it’s a lovely warm and weighty scarf that I can see adding a pop of colour to my usually quite dark winter wardrobe
