My affair with Noro stripes

Somewhat belatedly, my first finished project for 2009. It's been languishing for some time, waiting for the space and lack of distraction to block it. It's the latest installment of my long-running affair with Noro stripes:



It's the Chevron Scarf from Joelle Hoverson's 'Last Minute Knitted Gifts'. I've now made several projects from this book and, apart from the fact that they all take me much, much longer to complete than the seductive time-frames given in the book, everything has been a delight to make. So far, they've all been simple, straight-forward projects, but elegant, and usually with some small detail that's delighted me. With this scarf, it's the few rows of reverse stocking stitch at each end of the scarf that gives such a satisfying finish.



It's yet another project in one of the blue-green-brown Noro colourways that I keep buying despite my best endeavours to be more light-hearted in my colour choices. The stripes remind me of Missoni colours and patterns that I've loved for decades. And, obviously, it's (yet-again) two-row Noro stripes - this time in silk garden sock yarn.



Usually, I like scarf patterns that are reversible. As a very experienced scarf wearer I like to cultivate an air of negligence in my scarf-wearing, pretending to let the scarf fall how it will. I thought a non-reversible scarf might require too much fussing to achieve this impression of carelessness, but somewhere through the knitting I fell in love with the texture of the reverse side of the fabric. So, I've decided it really doesn't matter which side (or indeed which combination of sides) is revealed.



I've called it the parquet scarf because when I first photographed it in its early stages I laid it on a parquet floor to photograph and found the lines of the scarf echoed the pattern of the parquet floor. I was then delighted to discover, when checking the Missoni website, that their gallery also has patterned parquet floors.