Aka Mum’s Garden Kerchief
Aka Serendipitous Felicity (it all turned out “just so” through pure chance)
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Overall
I couldn’t be more pleased with how this turned out - especially as I really wasn’t sure what effect the modifications that I made would have! It is definitely Serendipity that it came out the perfect size for what I wanted and the compact gauge has created a dense fabric that should be quite warm even though the yarns are of plant origin and not wool. No itchiness whatsoever! Yay!!! The fabric should also be quite hard-wearing, which is great, considering my intention when embarking on this project was to create something that is suitable for doing things like working in the garden. Thea says she thinks it looks too nice for that kind of use, but I say that there is nothing wrong with wearing something pretty whilst doing some hard work! In any case, mum can put it to whatever use she thinks most appropriate without worrying that it might be too delicate. I just hope she likes it!
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Mum would like a small kerchief style scarf to keep her neck warm whilst out in the garden so I decided to try out some of my modification ideas for the lovely Marlow pattern:

Stocking stitch base instead of garter
Tighter gauge to achieve smaller finished item
Mirror the colour striping sections
Try out the purlwise slipping for the double decrease
Continue testing out the kfb edge stitches
Ended up using a different bind off
Used seven different yarns rather than three, to create subtle textural variation and a tactile element, in addition to the colours. I tried to match colours in the various yarns in order to create some cohesion across the project. So, there is a green linen yarn and a similarly green bamboo Tencel yarn, a grey cotton/linen/viscose yarn and a similarly grey bamboo tencel yarn, a muted yellow bamboo tencel yarn and a natural linen yarn that is quite yellowish, and an off-white/cream bamboo tencel yarn. The linen is a little bit “crunchy” and “rustic” to start off with but was already starting to soften and become more pliable and drapey simply by being worked - and this change should continue to occur through use and washing, throughout the life of the garment. The bamboo yarn is extremely soft and drapey and far more “stretchy” and “slinky” than the other two types of yarn I used. It will be absolutely beautiful to wear next to the skin - so much so that I am considering using it to knit some singlets for mum. I do have concerns about how it will wear over time (and viscose should NEVER go in heated water or in the dryer), but we will see. The cotton mix yarn is somewhere in between the other two in terms of feel and hand. It has a subtle marled appearance and the fabric it creates is the most matte of the three different yarn bases I used. Again, I think it is lovely - beautiful and light and airy.

Started using 3mm needle and BC Garn Lino. This is a pure linen, so the result should be interesting! I have zero experience knitting with linen, but I’ve done some reading … not that I’m following all of the suggestions …

For the WS rows, I am doing the kfb in the first and last sts, as req.d by the pattern, but purling all of the other WS stitches.

Anyway, the difference created by slipping the double decrease sts purlwise rather than together knitwise is apparent within a couple of rows. You can see the rightmost st that is involved in the decrease sweeping from right to left across the front of the column of sts that contains the decrease, with the other two sts disappearing in behind it. The usual “slip two tog knitwise” method creates a lovely central column of stitches with a stitch from either side disappearing behind - that is why it is called a “centred” or “central” double decrease. The slipping purlwise double decrease is not “centred” … but it is a bit more decorative in this instance where the decreases are stacked at close intervals above each other, and it still results in the correct number of sts being decreased in the correct place in the garment.
After some more knitting, I am actually thinking that having a looser tension across those three stitches on the WRONG side rows might be more important in creating those gorgeous tiny holes along either side of the double decrease line that some of the projects display (but not mine) … more experimentation would be needed for me to sort that out. My tendency is to actually pull those three stitches in close to each other on every row, which creates a neat, “solid” decrease without gaps anywhere …

The Lino yarn feels a little bit waxy or oily … I am wondering whether they leave a little bit of machine oil in it from the spinning process. If this is the case, it should come out with a warm wash…

I think my unblocked gauge is around 34 sts to 10cm

One thing I hadn’t really thought about with creating this in stocking stitch was the propensity for the edges to want to roll. I think I was hoping that simply by keeping those edge sts in garter it would prevent rolling, but rolling became apparent along the right hand edge once the increases ceased there. This was in spite of me continuing to do four sts in garter at that edge and in spite of my mod to keep the incs going. It wasn’t a strong curl, so I am hoping that blocking will sort it out. Along that same edge, up where the sts are actually bound off, there is quite a strong curl. That whole edge is a little bit wavy, too, which is probably due to me doing those edge stitches and the bind off too loose, but we will see how things go with blocking. I found it really difficult to know what I should do with my tension along that edge and in the bind off.

Section A
Very happy with the result! I made sure to work the edge kfb sts very loosely so that the drape of the finished item won’t be “confined” by tight edge stitches (remember that there is absolutely no stretch in pure linen yarn). I knitted the wrong side row in three random places to provide some surface interest - in these rows I tried to remember to purl the single stitch in the middle of the double decrease in order to preserve the continuity of that line across the shawl. I can’t wait to see how the change to stocking stitch will change the overall shape of the shawl (given that each row is much taller in stocking st than in garter stitch, but the garment is knit on the bias). Interestingly, the two “wings” are not curving upwards in this yarn in the way that they did in my first Marlow. I am pretty sure that this will change with progress and with blocking … and I am about to change yarns …

I’m thinking that I will use this yarn for the very last colour block, too

Section B
Go Handmade Tencel Bamboo Fine, natural
I did my best to try to match the gauge of the first yarn, but I will only know how well I did (or otherwise) after I block the finished item. This yarn should be more forgiving than the one I used for the first section as it has more “give”. It feels to be finer than the Lino.

Section C
Cewec Linea (grey)
This yarn has similarities with the Lino I used in section A. It seems to be about the same thickness and has no stretch. It also feels more “ropey”, though.

Section D
Go Handmade Tencel etc (green)
Last wrong side row knitted rather than purled

Section E
Go Handmade a Tencel etc (beige)
Go Handmade Tencel… (kit)
Ditto (natural)
Order of stripes: beige, kit, beige, kit, natural, kit, beige, kit, beige
Ws of the natural stripe knitted

Section F
Back to the first yarn and colour (Lino in khaki)
Knitted the first and last WS rows
This is the section where the point at the bottom of the shawl is created so I needed to decide what I was doing with those edge sts. In the spirit of continuing my exploration of the neatness created by the kfb on every edge st, I continued to do that in the following way:
RS rows start with kfb, k1, k2tog
WS rows end with (last 4 sts) ssk, k1, kfb
This moves the corresponding dec. one st away from the kfb. It will be interesting to contrast this with my other Marlow shawl, where I put the dec.s immediately adjacent to the kfb. It will also be interesting to see how it goes with the stocking st ground… I have no idea what the best idea for tension with those sts might be, so I am just doing them loosely (esp. with the linen)

Section G
BC Garn Lino (natural)
Cewec Linea (grey)
Go Handmade Tencel etc (natural)
Stripe sequence: Lino, Linea, Lino, Linea, Tencel, Linea, Lino, Linea, Lino
Echos the other striped section except in different fibres and lighter, more muted colours … the colours are too similar in this section to show the stripes well.
Knitted the WS row of the Tencel again

Section H
Cewec Linea
Knitted the first WS row
I debated quite a bit about which yarn/colour to use here. This block of colour is comparatively large, taking up two sections. I didn’t want to use the section A yarn b/c I had used quite a bit in section A, then again in section F, and I wanted to use it for the last colour block of the shawl, therefore using it here would probably be more of it than I really wanted. I felt the green bamboo would be too “heavy” and dark, but the creamy coloured bamboo would be too bright (rather than the nice accent that I wanted it to be). The yellow and grey bamboo yarns I felt would be, again, too heavy and dark. This left the grey viscose/cotton/linen Linea yarn or the pale, muted gold Lino yarn, both of which I used in section G. I wanted to leave the gold as more of an accent, so the grey it is … but you might not even be able to tell that section G has different stripes and section H does not. Oh well! I think the soft grey will be pretty!
… oh dear! I had a big “whoopsie daisy” in this section! I was a couple of rows past the lace patterning when I noticed that the lace to the left of the double decrease line really didn’t look right - but I couldn’t figure out what was wrong (I’m not very experienced with lace knitting). If I notice that there is a mistake in my knitting, my default reaction is to ask myself whether it will be very noticeable if I don’t correct it, whether I will be happy with the FO if I don’t correct it and whether it will play havoc with stitch counts etc if I don’t correct it, in the first instance. If the answer to these questions is that it won’t be very noticeable, I will still be happy with the FO, and it isn’t going to play havoc with the rest of the pattern, then I just ignore it. Unfortunately, I think this WAS going to be quite noticeable, I WASN’T going to be happy with the FO and I had no idea what I’d actually done incorrectly so I couldn’t tell whether it would create problems further on… I’m still not 100% sure what I did, but I think I’d put 9 decreases between the fans rather than 6 in the first row of patterning. Anyway, having determined that I was going to have to do something about it, my first instinct is to stabilise the stitches below where the mistake is by putting something like a lockable st marker through them, work to where the problem is and simply drop down only those stitches and ladder them back up in the correct manner, then keep working like it never happened. Let’s just say I learned some valuable lessons!!!:
If inc.s/dec.s are involved you could well be better off frogging
If more than three or four sts are involved you could be better off frogging
If you really aren’t sure what it is that you’ve done incorrectly you could be better off frogging
… let’s just say that I ended up frogging after several hours of fiddling around and still having no good solution in sight plus quite a mess of extra needles and stitch markers through stitches. The frogging was very quick - I grabbed a really small diameter circular needle, picked up the entire row of stitches below where the problem was, pulled the proper needle out, ripped out everything back to where I had the small needle, and simply worked all of the rows again (onto the proper needle).
Ta dah!!! Problem solved!

Section I
Same yarn as preceding section.
I had realised in the last section that I was two stitches short of the needed number to the right of the double decrease line. This would ultimately affect the number of rows in the shawl and mean that some colour blocks would be smaller. I decided to remedy this by performing one less decrease at the start of the lace patterning on the two rows that it occurs in this section.

Section J
Green bamboo and cream bamboo
First two rows as per pattern - ie I knitted the WS row in the slip stitch pattern. This resulted in some lovely tiny “beads” of green in between the elongated sts. All other rows in stocking stitch.

Section K
Lino (natural)
Purled the WS row of the 2nd rpt
Khaki bamboo
Natural bamboo
Khaki bamboo
Knitted the WS rows in the slip stitch patterning to create the little purl bump “beads” b/w the elongated stitches, matching the prior slip stitch segment

Section L
Bamboo (kit) and Linea (grey) in two row stripes for the first part of the section. I wanted to have this section in a hardwearing yarn but there wasn’t much left in the grey Linea, so I striped it with the similarly coloured bamboo yarn that is not as hard wearing. The colour needed to have some contrast with the last colour, which is the green Lino.
Knitted two WS rows
Green section as per pattern

Bind off
The bind off suggested in the pattern seemed to encourage the curling of that edge that I had b/c of the stocking stitch ground, so I wanted to add purl stitches so that they accounted for around half of the stitches. I came up with:
K1, p1, p those two tog tbl, yarn to back, k1, k those two tog tbl, yarn to front, p1, p those two tog tbl, yarn to back, k1, k those two tog tbl etc etc
The edge was still curling, as you can see in the unblocked photos, but it wasn’t as bad as when I bound off purely using knit stitches - and I have hopes that blocking might help significantly …

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Unblocked but finished size = 152cm x 38cm, along the top edge and from point to top edge (perpendicular
Unblocked but finished gauge ~ 33st x 46rows to 10cm (!) … I’m pretty sure I’ve knit woollen socks looser than that on smaller needles!!! I knew I was pulling really tight, but I didn’t realise quite how much …

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Thoughts I had whilst knitting this (and/or the first Marlow I knitted):

• The sparse feather and fan reminded me of the canopy of trees - could they be turned into trees by adding a trunk somehow? Maybe some rows of stacked CDDS, two next to each other or separated by a double increase, directly underneath the “fan”. You would probably need some other increases as well in order for this to work. Some kind of colour work to better delineate the tree form might also be possible or necessary
• It would be interesting to try to make the stitch that sweeps across the front of the double decrease (when slipped purlwise) a different colour, so that the double decrease line appears kind of wrapped or like a barber pole. I’m thinking that maybe if the first of the three stitches involved in the double decrease was a different colour that might do the trick… would a single stitch intarsia-type thing work???… it would only involve swapping colours for that single stitch on WS rows b/c on RS rows the stitch is slipped and then passed over another st, rather than being “worked” itself …
• The neater edge st trick definitely works nicely, resulting in an edge that kind of looks woven or similar to the selve edge on a bolt of fabric. You need to be careful about how many sts you use up for it though! Check how close any patterning comes to the edge b/f deciding on 3 or 4 (or another number) sts.
• Pink and green is my all time favourite colour combination, but there are several that come not too far after, and muted (or even dark valued) green with neutrals is probably one that is right up there. This got me thinking about why. I came to the conclusion that to me pink (favourite colour) was associated with joy, happiness, fun, laughter in just about all of its different iterations. Green, to me, feels like peace, safety, calmness, restfulness.