Weldon's 1904 Double Bordered Diamond Scarf

I've been behaving myself all weekend. Saving myself for the work week as it were. As a result, I'm surrounded by dust bunnies but have made great headway on a new project. Since I couldn't give the Hemlock Ring Throw to its intended recipient based on the blocking disaster I had with that project, I came up with an alternative.

After falling prey to a few skeins of Karabella Lace Merino at the Yarn Boutique last week, I did some pattern browsing and paired this yarn with the Double Bordered Scarf With Diamond Borders from Victorian Lace Today.  The pattern suggests a mohair which means well, some fuzziness. The Karabella on the other hand is plied, so it's not completely smooth and it's not fuzzy at all.  I really like the way it holds the stitches. Apparently a lot of people make socks out of it which I don't understand. Wouldn' t they quickly develop holes?

Anyway, I'm really enjoying the knit. It started slowly. I just couldn't grasp the instructions right away. In fact, I worked myself into a bit of a lather over them. It seemed to me that they were unnecessarily complicated and didn't obviously answer the question of whether you purl or knit on the wrong side of the fabric. I couldn't proceed so I went on to Ravelry to the VLT group and searched the board. Bingo. Knitters had discussed the problem and worked it out months ago. The best hint was from Janice61 who averred that the only purls in the whole pattern are on rows 1 and 11.

I was away and soon appreciated the way the pattern had been written out.  I've recorded all my other hints on my project page. When I began, I thought I'd have to make a mark every time I finished a row and that I'd have to constantly be looking at the charts. Not so. After a number of repeats, I've started to train myself to look away. First I did this for only the easy sections within rows, then for a whole row and then for several rows at a time. Now I've got it so that I have to look only three times during the 20 row repeat. This makes the knitting go much faster and is very encouraging. I like it when that happens during a knit. Here are the results so far. Couldn't resist blocking to see how many repeats I'll have to do to get a 60 inch scarf. Answer: about thirty.

Here are a couple of photos. Coming later this week: The Next Dickey.