Unplanned Scenic Diversion

Okay, so I got a bit lost while walking in the peak district. But at least I had plenty of time to think while I tried to find my way back to the path. It turns out that navigating by a stream is only a good plan provided that there aren't four streams.

I took some yarn on holiday in the hopes of working out a couple of patterns that have been in my head for a while. It all seemed a bit boring though and, on my walk, something else started growing in my mind. There's an interesting border in one of my stitch books. It's a cable with an in-built fringe that has caught my eye a few times though I've never quite had a use for it.

I'm not sure whether it was the lovely, expansive surroundings or the chilly evenings in my tent with no big, drapey wrap for my shoulders but by the end of the holiday I knew what I wanted to make. It would be a crescent-ish shaped wrap/scarf, worked side-to-side with the fringe on the lower border. I deliberated a bit on what would go into the centre but I was fairly certain it would be something very open and not too same-y.

When I came home I started on a few prototypes. I began with my Chiminea lace and played around trying to get something a little more elongated that would flow better over the whole length of the scarf.

The colours are extreme, I know, but these are just prototypes. The large rectangular block shows the progression from the Chiminea pattern (just visible at the lower end) through some messy attempts at cable, through something that's a little promising, into a pattern that I'm actually happy with.

Then I had to work out how the increasing would work, that's up in the top right. This isn't the first attempt, it got ripped back three times before I was happy.

In the bottom left you'll see two versions of the braid/fringe, the left-most one is by the book but the one on the right is a lot stronger. The fringe is made by dropping stitches and cutting the loops but the by-the-book version is far too loose and I wouldn't trust it to hold together for long. The second version has a twisted stitch between the fringe and the pattern which really locks in the fringe.

The yellow triangle was an attempt to bring it all together but the cable is too narrow and the shape is all wrong.

The blue triangle that's still on the needles is attempt six (at least!) and is the product of a long team meeting. I  tried a lot of ways to start things off but I'm really happy with the final result. Happy enough that I've now cast on draft one of the real thing.

There was one section that I couldn't face prototyping: how to get from the end of the blue triangle to the start of the blue.... trapezium? So instead I just went for it. And that seemed like a good plan until I got to row 55 last night and realised that I'd gone very wrong and had forgotten two stitches entirely from my pattern. That'll teach me to be patient with my prototypes.