I had bought a wonderful yarn at some point – a variegated Viking Nordlys. It is sold as a sock yarn, and that’s what I bought it for. But when I touched it, the yarn felt so soft and thin that I thought I’d wear right through it if I made it into socks. So I went looking for a new project for it.
There is a wonderful knitting site called Ravelry. Everything on Ravelry is indexed and linked to everything else – yarns to projects to patterns, and so on. Each pattern links to actual projects that actual people have made following that pattern – often you can see many varieties of a cardigan, which really helps to see what it could look like. And there are thousands upon thousands of patterns. It’s my first point of call when I am looking for ideas for knitting projects.
I looked for projects using the Nordlys yarn, found some, which sparked new ideas, and finally decided on this Icicle scarf.
Ordered the book (Nancy Marchant’s Knitting Fresh Brioche). Waited nearly two weeks for it to arrive. Opened it, and nearly gave up. The patterns looked very intimidating. The written instructions for this scarf cover over two full pages!
Still, I tried it out with some scrap yarn, and it turned out to be quite doable, as long as I paid close attention to what I was doing. As soon as I didn’t, I started making mistakes, and the only way to recover from a mistake in two-colour brioche is to rip up everything you did since the mistake, one stitch at a time.
After the first 20 rows or so, I started getting the hang of it. I put away the swatch and started on the real thing with my beautiful yarn. With some practice, the pattern doesn’t require quite that single-minded focus any more. I can see the pattern in the pattern, so to say, and understand it rather than just follow it mechanically. It’s actually quite fun to knit.
And just look at how beautifully the scarf is turning out! On the front, the orange/yellow/green yarn is like autumn leaves, with the light gray like a cloudy autumn sky peeking through the leaves, providing depth and contrast. The rear side is like the first day of winter, with the autumn leaves covered in hoarfrost.