I had never heard of Double Knitting until I got this pattern. I was fascinated.
Double Knitting seems to be the sort of delightfully creative thing that any self-respecting Ravenclaw would take on. What better than a double knit (Corvus) Raven (Crow, Jackdaw) scarf in the Ravenclaw house colours??
I had no idea WHERE to start, and watched many youtube videos, each left me more confused than the last.
FINALLY I found this one from RJ Knits
And I understood. Hoorar!
My yarn and the pattern didn’t get along too well. Knitted single (1 ball) the scarf was too narrow, knitted double (2 balls of same colour together) it was too stiff, so I added 8 stitches each end (4 stitches for each side/colour). I also added an extra stitch to the ends because I twisted both yarns together and I didn’t like how it went straight into the pattern instead of being a boarder or edging. Every instruction I’ve seen has said you work the pattern knit purl, because I knitted the first stitch/twisted boarder edge stitch, and was too impatient to work out how to do otherwise, I’ve had to work it purl knit (I was part way through the second foot print when I realised I could have purled instead of knitted the edge stitch. Doh!) . Because of the extra stitches I also had to adapt the foot print part of the pattern, I just made them a few stitches further apart, but I re-drew it on square paper, representing the new number of stitches, so I could follow it easily. I’m also using a lot of stitch markers, marking each side of the footprint centre, and the 4 added stitches at each edge, this also marks where the furthest stitch for the foot goes. They all look a bit scary but it would be harder for me to work without them!
One thing that I did that as super helpful was print the corvus part of the pattern again, making sure I had one facing each way (one for knitting one side, one for the other when I turn it around) stuck them back to back, making sure they lined up (used window as a lightbox to do the matching, but that’s cos I’m a bit OCD about that sort of thing), then laminated them, so I could draw through the rows as I knitted them, before doing this I really cocked up the pattern early in because I couldn’t keep track of what was happening and had to unravel by about 10 rows. It’s wipe clean and can be cleaned for the raven at the other end of the scarf. If you can’t ge to a laminator, I guess taping it inside a polythene folder pocket would do the trick too. I didn’t do the mirror image of the footprint I adapted, and it’s pretty annoying having to think in reverse.
What looked like this at the start of Lent is now looking like THIS!
Available from Alasdair Post-Quinn’s Ravelry
