This week, I chat with Derya Davenport, also known as Laylock, who knocked my socks off with her awesome design skills, and I share a pattern for a simple scarf.
Two By Four Scarf
I picked up some local, handspun alpaca yarn at an event here in Fort Wayne last year and knit it up into this scarf. I wanted to share the pattern with you all, but I always feel bad when directions for cool things start with "find this one-of-a-kind cool thing that I found 3,000 miles away from your house." So, I procured a single skein of Bulky Naturals by Blue Sky Alpacas and worked away until I ran out of yarn.
That one skein made a swatch that is 12 inches long. So, depending on your desired scarf length, you could use between 5 and 7 skeins. I'm cooking up something else to do with that swatch, but I'll have to wait and see how it turns out.
It's a pretty simple cabled pattern that depends on crossing four stitches over two other stitches, instead of the usual three-over-three cable cross. I love the way it looks and the good news is, if you have been thinking of cabling without a cable needle for the first time, this would be a great project to try it. The stitches are ENORMOUS, so easy to see and easy to grab with your needle tip. Incidentally, a regular cable needle might be a little short for this, so if you do want some stitch insurance, you might want to use a smallish double-pointed needle instead. Just about any size would work, as long as it's not shorter than 6 inches or a larger needle gauge than the ones you use for the project.
Conversation
I had a great time chatting with Derya about learning to knit, purling, her newsletter, and a whole bunch of other things. I used a different recording set up for this one. It has a little echo, and you can hear when I type really well, but, I think it worked pretty well.
She also, generously, extended a 20% off discount to listeners of the show for her patterns. It's good through the end of August, 2011. Go tell her how nice she is. Also, buy a pattern.
Links
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