Pattern Leaf Cravat, by Teva Durham.
Source Interweave Knits Winter 02/03
Yarn Noro Silk Garden, #84, almost 2 skeins.
Needles US6/4.25mm
Start-to-end 14-Jul-2007 to 16-Jul-2007
I was really in the zone last week, progressing along steadily with my Fiery bolero and Teardrop lace scarf. But, for some reason, when the weekend came and I had all that time ahead of me to actually knit the bolero and scarf, I found that I wanted something fresh, something different and quick.
So, I began to reorganize my yarn stash a bit, and right from the start, I came across my 3 skeins of Noro's Silk Garden which had been a gift from a friend, Liz. I put aside my plans to reorganize (I did eventually get to it, somewhat).
The funny thing is that when I saw this yarn, I immediately thought of Teva Durham's leaf cravat. I love her designs, expecially her use of leaf motifs... I'm pretty sure I sought out this back-issue of Interweave Knits specifically for this one small pattern... Winter 02/03.
This is a very easy pattern. One leaf end is knitted, then stitches are picked up from the caston edge and knitted for the length of the scarf, ending with the other leaf end. I think the resulting scarf is cute and different. I think I've read in blogs (a few years back) that some people were disappointed in the end result--since it sort of resembled a snake with two heads more than a vine with leaves at the end. Adam, actually suggested that I added forked tongues to 'the heads', before I told him that they were supposed to be leaves!
The yarn... I'm not a big fan of yarns with varying colors. I both loved and was very annoyed with the colors in the yarn. I was knitting beautiful burnished hues of reds and oranges and browns, then suddenly, the yarn snagged. And, I found myself looking at a knot joining in black and greens and pinks. I let this go with the first skein, since there was black in the other two skeins and the pinks really turned back into the burnished reds and browns.
But, when I joined in the second skein and knitted my way through to the black part... once again, I found that it was knotted in. I really didn't want another abrupt color change, so I snipped out the black segment and joined in the yarn after that. I actually considered going back and doing a little "surgery" to remove the first black segment and "graft" in new colors so that the scarf would have a more even autumn-ish tone. But, I decided against it. haha
With some strands leftover from the project, I knitted my favorite things: Leaves. Aren't they cute? I wonder what I will do with them...
