Swatching yet again

Last month while at Churchmouse I scored a couple skeins of Loft:

Birdbook and Woodsmoke

Oh, such lovely stuff. For a month, those skeins sat on my coffee table where I could pet them daily, and imagine what they might become.

Last week I finally wound them into balls, and got started swatching. First up, basic garter and stockinette stitch:

with some stripes for interest

I often do a swatch like this one, when I’m just getting to know a new-to-me yarn. Starting with a single stitch and working a kfb increase at the beginning of each row means I don’t have to think about how many stitches to cast on – rather, I just keep increasing until it’s “big enough.” Working in garter and then in stockinette (and then in seed stitch or tweed stitch, if I feel like it) gives me a decent idea of how the yarn behaves.

And I like how Loft behaves. Being tweedy and a bit rustic, it begs for colorwork. Yet some lace samples at Churchmouse intrigued me. I had to try at least one lace swatch:

vine lace, natch

This I kind of like. Maybe I’ll work lace out of some future skeins of Loft. These skeins, though, really want to be colorwork.

But what kind of colorwork? Simple garter stripes, perhaps in a hat where the rows ran vertically, would be really effective.

Sadly, however, I can rarely muster proper appreciation for simple designs; it’s the more involved ones that always grab my interest. Case in point: a scarf worked in double knitting, with a floral motif running the length of the scarf:

on one side, Birdbook on Woodsmoke...

...and on the other, Woodsmoke on Birdbook

Mm, I really like this concept. But this specific design? Not so much: the petals/flowers are fine, but the leaves and vines are so small and delicate that they kind of get lost. And the design is fiddly. The pattern isn’t easy to memorize, so I have to refer to the chart for every row. Blech! Part of why I love charts is that they often let me memorize a stitch pattern before I’ve finished working the first repeat, letting me set the chart aside and knit on blissfully. Not this stitch pattern: I’m tied to the chart, and I don’t care for that.

So where does that leave me? Right now, I’m thinking I’ll restart the scarf using a simpler, bolder stitch pattern, perhaps something inspired by traditional mendhi designs. If that doesn’t pan out (or if I get bored by how slowly the double-knit fabric grows), I suppose I can go back to the garter-stitch hat idea.

Your thoughts?

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