Drifting pleats

I'm on a bit of a yarn diet this year, but I have four balls of Rooster Almerino Aran in the stash that I thought would be perfect for a soft, drapey scarf. So last night I cast on for Drifting Pleats.

It's tricky, but it had me sitting there in awe of Lynne, for thinking the whole scheme up, and also of her tech editor! I can imagine it might have made mere mortals rip their hair out -- it would have been difficult to test and hard to get the pattern into a form that wasn't too prescriptive and yet conveyed the necessary technical information to create the pleats.

I'm interested in the fact that every time I pause and think, 'Could this possibly be the right way to do this?' I can trust the pattern (and my intuition) and it works!

Drifting Pleats

Hi everyone,

I've been enjoying seeing what what everyone is knitting from this fabulous book, and finally have enough pictures and information to post what I'm knitting.

I decided to knit Drifting Pleats in early December. When I went shopping for yarn, I had 3 factors in mind, and a fourth was adopted fairly quickly: color, drape, gauge and yardage was quickly added. I couldn't find anything that fit all of the criteria -- yardage was added because I did find a couple a balls that would have fit the first three, but there weren't enough. I decided I could sacrifice gauge and bought Blue Sky Alpaca Silk, in Garnet. The yarn is quite a lot finer than the worsted weight called for in the pattern, and I'm using US 4 needles. I figured I could make some of the width up by adding a pleat, once I got a sense of how the pleats and the drifting are achieved, an extra pleat (or two or three or four) are no big deal.

I love this knitting. This is knitting you have to think about, it's complex without being difficult, and it is so different from anything else I've done. Figuring this out reminds me of when I finally got how to knit stranded knitting with both hands: I had a very hard time getting it, but finally a light bulb went off and my hands suddenly knew what to do. This gives me the same feeling.

Pleat Detail with Bonus Cat Hair

I'm very much enjoying this piece of knitting genius, which for someone who has a strong dislike for making scarves, is saying something!

--Lee

Drifting Pleats - first, but not the last!

I just finished knitting my very first scarf from Lynne Barr's book - Drifting Pleats - and it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience! The end product is not too shabby, either!

I used a wonderful handspun single-ply wool/silk - Single-Dyed Phat Silk Phat from La Lana Wools. I knit the scarf using Bryspun plastic needles.

There are more details on my blog, including more photos!

Needles to say, I'm already scheming my next project from this book :). Did you know that Melanie Falick has a gallery of "New Scarves" on her blog? All 27 scarves in a convenient layout, so we can see them side by side instead of flipping back and forth in the book!