Saroyan

I took a major hiatus from blogging for almost a year. While I've been at it (more or less) since January I've mainly been relying on my backlog of knits from 2013 to fuel the posts. However, I've hit the point where I only have 4 well photographed finished projects left to show you. (Keep your comments about whether some of the other projects I've shown you have been "well photographed" to yourself.)

Finished in July of this year is my Saroyan by Liz Abinante. I've also made Liz's Traveling Woman shawl in 2009 and both patterns are great. I started it because I was going to be teaching a class on shawls knit side-to-side but it was a summer class and filling them is hit or miss. There weren't enough takers, so we had to cancel. I got 3-4 repeats in to learn the pattern, but stalled to work on other projects once the class got canceled.

It languished for over a year until I finished the last commute project I was working on and went rummaging for something that would be commute appropriate. I found the old Saroyan and after a few weeks on the train I had a new scarf.

The fun thing about this pattern is that you get to choose the depth based on how many increase repeats you do. and because it's knit side to side if you weight your yarn along the way, you can use up all your yarn. My version is 6 increase repeats deep, and 8 straight repeats in the center making 20 leaves total (counting the 6 decrease repeats on the other side.)

The yarn I used is Plymouth Yarn Suri Merino in the aptly named colorway 687. It's a blend of 55% alpaca and 45% merino and it's got lovely drape. My best guess is that it took just over 300 yards. I've already warn it a few times because fall is definitely in the air here. I'm one of those perpetually cold people, so a new wooly scarf is just exactly what I need.