New Project #1: Olive Garden Scarf

I went to Tricoter for the first time yesterday, looking for Socks That Rock yarn, and picked up a new project. Most of the other projects that I'm working on, or have been working on, involve a lot of finicky detail and are slow going. I wanted something that I could work on without thinking about it much, because I've been working a lot lately and concentrating on a lace or cable chart in the evenings is tough. As you can see from the photo, this pattern is faster--it's about 7.5 inches long after only one evening of knitting. It's a simple 25 stitch wide seed stitch pattern knit on US8 needles with three strands of yarn. The variegated yarn is Socks That Rock lightweight yarn in the Olive Garden colorway, and the other yarns are Filatura Di Crosa Baby Kid Extra in Eggplant and Sage. Baby Kid extra is a mohair / nylon blend, and it fills out and fuzzes up the pattern. I love the way seed stitch looks, although I don't really care for switching from knit to purl every stitch. The look of it wins out every time, and in this case I'm back to practing the Eastern European-style combination techniques that I learned last spring at Hilltop.

Tricoter carries a very nice selection of yarns and feels very fashion-oriented--it feels a little more high-end than many of the other stores I frequent, possibly because it's in a high-end neighborhood, and possibly because the prices seem a little high for a girl from South King County. The women in the store were both friendly and helpful, and I even ended up special ordering the long-sought-after handles for the Noni Carpet Bag that has been on ice since August. I've been looking for the handles whenever I'm in a yarn shop, but this is the first place that I've seen the size and shape that I want.

The Tricoter sample of this scarf was in the X-Mas Rock colorway, and it had an angora crochet border. This scarf is already made of two fibers that I can't wear next to my skin, so I don't see any harm in adding a third. Once the knitting is complete, I'll I will probably take it back to Tricoter for a crochet edge lesson, and some angora in an olivey green, if possible. I'm a little anti-crochet, but learning a little probably won't hurt, and the edge really pulled together the colors in the sample scarf. I'm not sure that this photo does the Socks That Rock (or the scarf, really) justice, but the colors are beautiful. I've registered for the 2007 Rockin' Sock Club, so I'll be seeing a lot more of this yarn.