Chevron Scarf FO

When Yarn Barn had their annual sale last December, I bought the yarn to make the Chevron Scarf. I'd heard that knitting the thing was a chore due to finished size (70" long, I think). But after trolling through the completed projects on Ravelry, I just had to have one.

Initially, I thought I'd use these two similar colors:





Then I read that using contrasting colors is a better way to go, otherwise the lovely variations in the colors would get lost in the pattern. Keeping this in mind, I went back to Yarn Barn and got a skein of Koigu in a turquoise-y colorway. I thought it would look nice with the bottom of the above two skeins.

The yarn sat in my stash for almost a year, but when I finally started the scarf, I discovered that I chose my colors well...



Despite all the complaints I'd read about the scarf taking forever to knit, it only took me a couple of weeks. I was so in love with the color combination that I couldn't stop knitting it. I even balanced two skeins of yarn on a flight to San Diego in October just so I could keep working on it while I was traveling (I usually take only the smallest, simplest, single-skein projects on trips).

The finished scarf is only about 52 inches long. I'm not sure what happened there. The called-for gauge is 38 stitches per 4" in the chevron pattern. Now, that seems awfully tight for Koigu (the called-for yarn) on size 5 needles. I don't even get that tight a gauge with Koigu on size 1s, and I'm an uber-tight knitter. I checked my gauge a few inches into the scarf, and I got a little over 8 sts/in. on size 5s. One would assume that the scarf would then turn out much longer than in the pattern.



Nope. I knitted until I had just a few yards of the turquoise, then bound off. It's a decent length for a scarf, but it's not near the size it should be. I don't mind though - it works well for me. I can wrap it around my neck once, and the ends are wide enough the cover the top of my chest under the v-neck of my pea coat. I've even worn it a few times during the day at work. It goes really well with a pair of corduroys I wear regularly.

The first time I wore it to work, I was sitting at my desk, checking email, when I looked down to admire my handiwork and fondle the softness that is Koigu. And what do I see? A f@*!ing dropped stitch!


See that little bump in the middle? Dammit.

I honestly cannot remember the last time I dropped a stitch that I didn't notice right away and fix. Seems like a rookie mistake. But not fatal. I just anchored it on the back of the scarf by running some yarn through it and weaving in the ends. Now you can't even see it anymore.

Pattern: Chevron Scarf from Last Minute Knitted Gifts
Yarn: one skein of Claudia Handpaints (the brownish one) and one skein of Koigu PPPPM (the turquoise)
Needles: 10" size 5 Clover bamboo straights
Started: 10/28/08
Finished: second week of November '08
Mods: The only thing I did differently from the way the pattern was written, was that instead of using the same color for the 4 knit rows at either end of the scarf, I did one end in the brown and one end in the turquoise. Otherwise, I followed it exactly.



I loves my scarf.