A Flip, A Flop

A few days ago I finally ordered some more Noro Silk Garden so my one treasured skein could have company, and become a scarf. Yesterday the new skeins arrived:

Of course, once I’d ordered the yarn I got all inspired to start a scarf with the skein I had. I had in mind a garterlac scarf – entrelac in garter stitch so it was reversible. After knitting a couple of rows of diamonds I stopped and considered what I had.

It was an uninspiring lump. You could hardly make out the diamonds, because the yarn was too textured and dark.

So I tried making alternate stocking stitch squares. The blob above is the result. No improvement.

Next I found a normal entrelac scarf pattern and tried that. I like the front side:

But I hate the back:

Deep down I really want my scarves to be reversable. That meant entrelac was out. Thinking hard, I remembered there was an intriguing pattern on knitty.com called the Lizard Ridge blanket. It wouldn’t look too bad as a scarf, and it seemed to have a garter ridge between the wavy lines. Not perfectly reversible, but I imagined it wouldn’t look too bad on the back.

Turn out I was wrong about the garter ridge. There isn’t one. It just looks like there is one in photos because of the way the colours contrast. And you really need two shades of Noro to get the best effect.

So now what? Well, I lay awake last night running ideas through my mind. Short row wavy twists? Mitre square inspired labyrinthine patterns? A freeform multi-directional scarf?

Suddenly Michelle’s post about the therapeudic effects of good old garter stitch sounds like great advice.

5 thoughts on “A Flip, A Flop

  1. Try the harlots pattern that I mention on my blog – it’s very simple – and EXCELLENT for colour graduation and REVERSABLE.

    Start: Cast on 26 stitches (to make it wider or narrower add or remove stitches in groups of 4 )

    Row 1: *knit 2, knit into the back of the next stitch, purl 1. Repeat from * till there are 2 stitches left. Knit 2.

    Repeat that one row every row until you can stand it no longer, your scarf is long enough or you run out of yarn, whatever comes first.

    http://donyale.wordpress.com/2007/03/29/yes/

  2. I’ve been considering the harlot’s scarf pattern, but keeping it as a last resort.

    But I tell you what, that snake scarf is not far from what I was imagining last night!

  3. I’ve seen a Knitty pattern on a blog done in Noro, I think it is called wavy (or possibly ripple?) – it is a wavy rib pattern, so would be reversible (the version on Knitty is a plain colour, but it looked good in Noro).

  4. Yes, never underestimate the therapeudic effect of garter stitch. The Noro would probably look rather good in garter stitch, too. It’s just that our inner knitting snob (well, mine anyway) frowns on garter stitch as ‘too easy’. If you can get that annoying little voice to shut up, you can begin to enjoy the garter ridgey goodness.

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