Branching Out - Literally!

My beloved Nana and Grandad are coming to stay for a few weeks in October, which I am very much looking forward to. As my Nan is a lace lover, I decided to make her the Branching Out scarf I have been dying to make for weeks on end.

The yarn I have chosen for this project is King Cole Galaxy DK, in the Mars colourway. The colour is gorgeous, and the yarn itself is incredibly soft. It has sequins sown into the yarn, they are distributed quite evenly and unlike other sequin yarns I've tried, it isn't difficult to knit with. You have to be careful when frogging this yarn though, if a sequin gets stuck and then you tug, the yarn snaps. Leaving you with a long bit, a little bit and the skein of yarn.

It does turn a little fuzzy if you re-knit with it, but I've frogged it 6 times so far, and the yarn has coped reasonably well.

©2011 JAKRO SOFT LLC.

Learning to knit lace has been a dream of mine, before I even picked up the needles. I picked Branching Out as I thought it was a easy pattern for a beginner. What gave me that idea, only heaven knows. I've managed to stick with it though, and I'm very pleased I did.

I kept getting lost when I was following the pattern on paper (which resulted in it being ripped several times), so I decided to use the iPhone/iPod Touch App, JKnit. It took about 10 minutes to put the entire pattern into the system, but it was time well spent. Since using the app, I've only had the occasional, easy to fix, mishap!

I've managed to spend little periods of time here and there to knit the scarf, and so far I am on the 20th pattern repeat. It is 83cm long. But not quite long enough, yet. It has used almost 1 skein of yarn so far, I think another half - 3/4 of a skein later, I'll be finished. If you want to see more pictures of the scarf, click here!

For now though, I'm off to check out other WIPs over at Tami's, care to join me? :)