Checkerboard Lace Scarf

The Purl Bee is one of the cutest and most user friendly textile craft blogs around, and today I thought I'd send them a shout out in honor of the first project I've started from their extensive collection of free patterns. This is the checkerboard lace scarf. If you click the link, you'll see that mine is still a misshapen lump compared to their finished project. It's okay, that's how knitting is. The projects never truly come together until they are washed and stretched properly. Here's hoping it comes out right!

Besides the cool pattern, what makes this scarf special is the yarn I'm using. I've always been pretty stingy about yarn because I'm an amateur knitter. But when Artfibers closed their store in San Francisco, I splurged vowed to make myself a high quality project I'd be proud to wear for a long time. The name of this yarn is Casanova, and it's a lightweight yarn with a slightly rustic look. Its twiggy texture comes from being 50% comprised of Tussah silk, a silk that has coarse brown fibers and comes from semi-tropical regions like southern China or Bengal. The soft, luxurious texture comes from it's 38% mulberry silk, which is the softest and most expensive silk around. Throw in 12% mohair and it's a very unique yet practical yarn: the silk will make it extremely warm in a city where the wind picks up without notice, but the lightweight natural fibers should be a breeze (har) to stash in a purse, breathable, and durable.

In the meantime, I'm really enjoying the beauty of knitting with a luxury yarn. As with cooking and sewing, a simple project can be more exceptional than a complicated one if you start out with stellar materials!