Sittin' and Knittin'

Even though quilting is my passion and I'd have to choose that over anything else if I were told I had to give up all kinds of handwork but one, knitting is more relaxing for me. Lately, at the end of a day, sitting in front of a fire with my knitting needles and yarn has been feeling pretty good.

About a month ago a good friend, who is a knitter extraordinaire, was knitting herself a warm, winter scarf in an intriguing and lovely pattern. She explained she had seen the stitch in a book of different knitting patterns and thought it would work up well in a scarf. It was called the Berry Stitch.

She wrote the pattern out for me on an index card and said it was really easy to do. I eagerly cast on some nice cotton yarn I had. It only took me three tries to figure out the stitch (some of us are slower learners than others), but once I had it, I was off.

I wanted my scarf to be much narrower than hers and to be more of an accessory worn with an outfit rather than for warmth.

The thing I really like about this pattern is that it looks nice on the backside, too.

I think you can see the "berry" feature of the stitch a bit better on the above shot.

The yarn I used is actually more of a gold color than I was able to capture. I took 12 pictures in various locations trying to get a truer color representation, but none of them turned out any better than the ones posted above. Oh well, I think the idea was to show the knitting pattern more than the color of the yarn. Now I'm starting another one in a gorgeous, deep electric blue. And my daughter just picked out some more yarn for me to make one for her. Her choice is a deep rust color.

Hope I don't run out of evenings in front of the fire before I can finish the next two scarves!