If you are looking for some sixteenth-century, Italian opulence, then this is the scarf for you!

This pattern recreates designs taken from an Italian needlework pattern book first published in 1527, by Alessandro Paganino.

I have taken all of the suitable patterns from the book, and charted them as faithfully as possible, and they are all gloriously reworked in the double-knitting technique to form the building blocks of a long, sumptuous, and utterly gorgeous scarf.

Using four colours, there are as many as twelve different colour combinations to choose from, leading to an eye-popping array of possibilities. I used four colours, but there’s nothing stopping you from using as many as you like!

For my own scarf, I was very careful, as far as was possible, to use the different patterns in the order in which they appear in the book. Should you wish to do the same, I have given full instructions on how to do that in the pages that follow this introduction.

BUT WHY NOT PLAY THE DESTINY GAME?
I thought it might be fun, however, to be a bit more playful than that, and to leave things much more to chance in the construction of your own scarf, and I’ve devised a way of letting fate/destiny/call-it- what-you-will lead the way, not only in the choice of which pattern to use next, but also in the choice of which colour combo to go for. Not only will your scarf end up being truly unique, but you will totally absolve yourself of any responsibility for agonising over making choices!

Pattern includes full instructions and tutorials for all of the techniques used in making the scarf, along with links to special video tutorials on my YouTube channel. There are even handy QR codes, and that you can use your phone to scan them from your printed copy!

YARN KITS ALSO AVAILABLE
I’ve teamed up with Larissa, the dyer behind TravelKnitter.com, and she is selling kits in the original colours as shown here. Each kit contains 4x100g skeins of Larissa’s GORGEOUS BFL Supersock Yarn (75% BFL and 25% Nylon), as well as a special, single-use download code so that you can download the pattern to your Ravelry library.

Kits cost just an amazing £80.00! You won’t be able to buy the yarns and pattern separately for that price, so what are you waiting for?