Birdless boa

Susie Hodge has been for decades a major SF Bay Area textile influence. She's the person who taught me knitting at Straw Into Gold eons ago, along with an entire generation. She made me feel so happy about the whole process, and particularly the continental method, that I went off and made a great Icelandic sweater all by my little self afterwards, and I'm still knitting away after all this time. She rocked the spinning world in 2002 when Patricia Martin exhibited one of her woven boas at the Neckware show of CNCH.

Susie's had a hard time getting anyone to believe these are woven, and she's been explaining ever since how Helen Pope told her it was 'just Leno [lace] from [Harriett] Tidball', which was quite a stretch, or more exactly a creative leap. She came to the Loom and Shuttle guild meeting in June 03, and demonstrated how to do two versions of her boa, one indeed using simple Leno weave on 6 threads, and one in crochet. Briefly, the crochet one involves making a chain the desired length and then slip-stitching into it on the way back, incorporating locks of fleece, bits of ribbon, thrums, whatever attractive hairy fiber stuff you have on hand. Mohair locks make a really great boa, as it curls very artistically and doesn't mat with use. Susie gets hers from Royale Hare, but anything you have on hand is fine.

She mentioned one could do this in knitting, but also thought about it in terms of casting on a long chain and working from there. I can understand the difficulty of turning the work every few stitches, which would make the crochet version such a bear in anything but the lengthwise direction. But I happen to have congenital problems working scarves lengthwise. I realize most people can do this, but mine always turn out skewed somehow from casting-on tension problems, or downright twisted, and they never, ever come out a desirable size. I find it much easier to grope to a suitable width, and knit on till I either have enough or run out of yarn. So here is my approach to a knitted boa, with grateful nod toward Elizabeth Zimmermann who unvented idiot cord for the idiots among us :-). It's the perfect solution to knitting a small-width object.

My own sample for you is from Sandy McCabe's (in Covelo) great lustrous Lincoln, 3" long, same properties as mohair. I knit the core in contrasting wool to show proportions, you wouldn't.

I made my orange boa with:

1 ball Ashford Tekapo
1 ball Crystal Palace Iceland
1 ball Crystal Palace Deco-Ribbon
1 pair double-pointed Crystal Palace bamboo needles size 8

Directions

Cast on 3 stitches with a thin wool yarn. Wool is best because washing will just consolidate the boa structure, with tightening and fulling of the core, and presumably you will be wearing this to wild parties that will lead to a necessity for washing eventually :-).
Know how to make an idiot cord? You need double-pointed needles. Knit 3 stiches, push them back without turning to the other side of the needle, knit the same stitches again in the same order, repeat till you have enough length. Keep the first stitch of every 'row' pretty tight, as you'll be bringing the yarn across the back of the whole thing, forming a tube. With a bit of tugging if necessary, the resulting object will look perfectly seamless, as long as you don't cast on more than 4 stitches and potentially cause a ladder to form along the back.
If you'll want a tassel at the end of your boa, make an inch or so of idiot cord to attach the tassel to securely. If not, just knit a couple rows to start.
If you are an ex (or current) Girl Scout, you will probably prepare all your fleece/yarn in advance, but I find it perfectly acceptable to fish out a lock at a time. For maximum esthetic effect, you can take a lock about the desired thickness, split it, switch one so they're head to tail (so to speak), overlapping the cut ends at least an inch. You can if you're feeling queasy give a slight twist to the middle before you lay it in your stitch. The idea is to have beautiful maximally curly lock ends at both ends, and the resulting thicker bit disguises the core further as a good side-effect.
If you're using yarn, try to tear pieces off so the ends look more feathery, or cut them on a bias (obviously do that too for ribbon). Don't make your pieces too even in length, a couple inches variance is good for the organic look.
Take a lock or whatever piece of yarn, lay it on your knitting yarn right up against the cord, not too exactly in the middle, and purl into a stitch so the bit will hang outside the cord. Yank a bit on that stitch so it's tight.
Repeat, working a lock/yarn in every few rows, depending on how fine your base yarn is and how dense you want your boa. Fleece will need fewer ends than yarn, which will need roughly an end per row. If you're also using ribbon or something thin, add these randomly without counting them as an official end of yarn, so you don't get a thin spot.
If you want a boa, alternate which stitch in a row gets a lock, working regularly if you want a nice spiral. If you want a trim, work locks always into the same stitch position, this will give you an obvious un-hairy place to sew the core.
Cast off, after possibly working another plain inch of cord to attach the second tassel. Make and attach the tassels, sew trim onto desired spot, etc.