Other things to knit around a campfire.

As I said yesterday, I did other knitting around the campfire. After a few hours of sock knitting, in the chill, I needed to warm up my hands, so putting on my gloves I sat with a warm cup of coffee and looked through the Barbara Walker Treasuries. The books were an impulse addition to the book pile, but a good one.

With the van stocked with yarns, I could do almost anything but a sweater. I wanted something I could do on larger needles, and a particular skein of Noro Silk Garden Sock yarn caught my eye. With just a single skein, a narrow scarf seemed right. I wanted something simple to let the colours of the yarn be the star. This is Noro and it would to heartbreaking to hide its brilliant palette in something fancy. I landed on Brioche stitch. The website is well worth wasting time at.

If you have ever done a brioche stitch, you already know what I am about to say. What a neat knit. What a wonder of a stitch pattern. On a basic brioche stitch, you are always working in groups of three stitches, but only one stitch is ever a knit. It is knitting with a lot of not quite knitting. YO Slip1 Knit 2 tog.

It is rhythmic. Because there are only 3 stitches in each pattern group, you develop a very strong rhythm in just a few minutes. From the beginning it feels as if it is connected to something older than time, and you are part of it. YO Slip1 Knit 2 tog

It is fast. If you are only ever knitting 1 stitch on every grouping, it is going to be a speedy knit. YO Slip1 Knit 2 tog

Brioche stitch grants texture without weight, it lends form without pretentiousness, it gives elegance to a very simple scarf.
This is a particularly lovely colourway of Noro, one I hope he keeps around for a good long time. It moves ever so slowly and deliberately, fading from one shade to another, blending tones with just a hint of black right to the colour runs conclusion with a section of strong clear pure dense black. YO Slip1 Knit 2 tog

It will be yet another scarf for work. You can wear a scarf while digging for yarn and lifting boxes and stocking shelves. Yarns gives where pendants catch and break, and like many of the scarfs I wear, give flash to an otherwise boring palette of colours I wear. But the biggest and best reason to knit yet another scarf came to me while sitting at the fire.

If this cold spring cedes into cold summer, I'm going to need this scarf sooner than I think. YO Slip 1 Knit 2 tog.