New stitches: Love knot

Okay, I’m in love.

I have to thank  Claire from Once Upon A Yarn for introducing me to this stitch. She said it was beautiful with certain yarn, and she was right!

There was the usual learning curve, of course. On my first try I struggled to get each extended chain stitch the same length, and ended up with this very lumpy foundation row:

 

I frogged and tried again. This time I managed to get most of the foundation row the same size, but my next rows got progressively bigger and ended up stretching the foundation row.

More frogging. My third attempt did work and I got a few rows in…

before realising that this beautiful spangly Soukie is actually not the ‘right’ yarn for love knots. It looked stringy and a bit scrappy, which I was really not expecting from such lovely yarn, and the sequins kept catching so it was difficult to get the stitches the same length. So I frogged the lot and chose another skein from my birthday stash.

Enter Lily Sugar ‘n’ Cream in Batik Ombre. Now this is the right yarn for the job. Suddenly the love knot made sense and I whizzed through, whacking out 10 rows in around half an hour. I mean, it helps that it’s 60% gaps. You’ve got to love a stitch that lets you make something up so quickly.

Plus, just look at it:

Unrelated to the love knot; I adore this yarn. The solid colours are gorgeous all by themselves, but the transitions from one shade to the next are equally beautiful. I find myself wishing the colours would take just a bit longer to change so I can enjoy the intermediate shades some more.

So this is my first attempt to make something more spring/summery for the shop, as stocking nothing but winter hats and scarves will probably not get me very far for the rest of the year. It’s going to be a light, lacy scarf, which I think will look FABULOUS. But then, I am a little biased.

What do you think of the Love knot? Do you like my scarf too? Let me know in the comments!

Hannah

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