It is inspired by Orenburg lace shawls and is constructed the way that they are, beginning with a strip of edging and picking up stitches from there. The background pattern is also borrowed from there, and the main pattern motif is my own effort. I named the scarf "First Frost".
I wish lace knitting was better suited to making six-sided figures; then it would be an actual anatomically correct snowflake. This was the closest approximation I could make.
It is a weightless and airy little nothing! But it looks a little like someone drew a thick line all the way around it, outlining the scallops of the edging:
Yesssss.
I got this yarn—Fiddlesticks Exquisite wool/silk—without ever having heard of it before because of a deal at the Needle Arts Book Shop. It was $5/skein with the purchase of the Haapsalu Shawl book. I wanted the book, and the yarn was cheap, so I picked three colours because I liked the sound of them (Ivory, Peony, Damson).
This scarf took one 500m skein—one!—of Ivory. The knitting flew by because many of the wrong-side rows are knitted plain, and the ones that aren't have long sections of straight knitting without yarn overs or decreases. The pattern is straightforward and symmetrical, and the "peas" sections (the triangle bits outlining the diamond areas with snowflakes in them) are rhythmic and easy to work. The edging is a little patterned treat at the end of each row.
People thought it might be a table runner when I was knitting it, which is I guess an occupational hazard of knitting anything white and lacy. It is decidedly a scarf, though. The yarn is fabulously soft and the finished fabric doesn't feel too insubstantial even though it is close to weightless.
Anyway, you can knit one too if you'd like! You'll need one 50g/500m skein of Exquisite in Ivory and US #3/3mm needles to knit a scarf just like this one, which is 48" long and 15" wide. The pattern, which is charted in the interest of saving space, is $6 CDN and can be purchased right here.
4 comments:
That is so elegant. Just lovely!
I echo Alwen's comments. Very pleasing design and beautifully knitted.
Thank-you both very much!
Absolutely gorgeous! I have been asked whether I'm knitting a table runner as well, which struck me as totally bizarre - why would you assume table runner over scarf? I've never met anyone who knit table-runners...
In any case, however you plan to use this, it's stunning. :-)
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