Repeat

Quite a few years ago, when I was just getting back into knitting, I found some very discounted rowan yarn on sale. It was lovely, soft, spongey and asymmetrically plied with a single metallic thread. It was probably the first yarn I bought that was in any way out of the ordinary. Of course I had no idea what to do with it, but when has that ever stopped any knitter?

I bought four balls of purple and a ball each of blue, grey and dusky pink. Then, with the exception of a moderately wearable hat, the balls lurked under my bed for years.

Four years ago my sister was pregnant and, as it got colder her bump got bigger. So I dug out the wool and I knitted her a large but fairly shapeless and uninspired bump-wrap. The best part were the large and sparkly buttons I found to co-ordinate with the purple wool.

Now my niece is three and a half and my sister decided to clear out her maternity clothes. She let me have the bump-wrap back so I could salvage the buttons but I managed to recover more than that. I unravelled the yarn, wrapped it onto my niddy-noddy and the skein took its place in my own personal yarn shop.

There it remained until I came to pack up for my holiday last week. I knew I had to pack projects that I'd really feel like knitting in my tent in the evenings. They had to be projects for which I had the pattern printed or something I could read from my phone. And they had to be interesting.

There's something fascinating about the idea of knitting a lacey pattern in aran/worsted weight yarn so once I'd decided to do something with my purple Rowan, I knew it had to be a scarf. I procrastinated from my packing by scouring Ravelry until I came across Arroyo. Worsted, interesting, long, a little unconventional but straight-forward enough to read from my phone. In short, everything I was looking for! And, once that was decided, I knew that I'd be making it for my sister.

At times the rows were frustratingly long. I added a few more horizontal repeats because I knew I'd have yarn to spare. As the evenings drew in and the tent got a little chilly, 271 stitches felt like 250 too many but I'm so pleased with the results.

I'll admit that I had my doubts about the large area of garter stitch and but it came out fantastically springy, I just wanted to dig my fingers into it the whole time. In fact, the hardest part turned out to be blocking the points out without stretching out the garter stitch at all. I blocked the points out more than the pattern called for because the pattern's just too beautiful to not show off to its full.

I'd highly recommend this pattern. I've been frustrated recently because I've knitted several scarf/shawl/wraps that aren't quite long enough. This is quite the opposite, it's not only lovely but it's practical. I'm really hoping that my sister will get a lot of use out of it, either as a wintery scarf or as something to put round her shoulders on chilly evenings. Tent optional.