Fortunately I’m an extrovert. So a new pattern, a new designer, new yarns are all interesting to me. Like people, a pattern requires “getting to know you.”

Important Aspects of Getting To Know You

First off, this design surprised me. For instance, can you guess how wide this scarf is?

I know what a shitty estimator I am when it comes to dimensions. But I thought this beauty was about 20-24 inches wide.

It’s only 11 inches wide.

I was also surprised at the errors I found in the pattern. The initial two rows of the pattern has a typo in it. And I either don’t understand the charting, or else I think they screwed up the way they carry the yarn to make sure it’s in the correct position to pick it up when you need it. Hard to describe, and I honestly my have misread an aspect of it, but I’m having to work some of it as I go along.

Lucky for this new beauty, that I adapt easily.

As an impatient and sometimes lazy knitter, I also need to figure out ways I can make the knitting of this project more efficient for myself…the corners I can cut and those I can’t.

For instance…this is a form of intarsia knitting. I can often let my yarn-ends get wound around each other and unwind them after they get into a tangled mess. With this project using mohair, it requires untangling almost every time two colors twist around each other. When mohair twists, its hairiness grabs onto other yarns and will quickly become a tangled mess. And it’s a little bit difficult with two colors in a row. Three colors increases the difficulty level exponentially.

Turning my work in the opposite direction. To prevent yarns from twisting, I’m also learning to turn my work in a counterclockwise direction (the opposite of what I usually do).

Remembering to do the selvedge edge. This fabric has an odd selvedge edge and requires special handling of the first and last stitches in a row. Eventually, my hands will do it automatically. But not yet

Finally, keeping track of where I am and keeping track of the many charts requires using Knit Companion. And preferably on my iPad. Which also requires that I recharge my iPad much more frequently.

Current Knitting

As you might guess, the yarn for the Silvatica Stole arrived this weekend, and I started work on it.

I’ve only gotten about 50 rows of knitting completed. I think my alternate colors will work well for this gorgeous design. I’ll let you ruminate on what you think the other two colors are before I display them for the World to see.

Silvatica Stole, it’s nice to meet you and I look forward to getting to know you much better in the next few weeks.