New VLT Project

I am very tired, but after tomorrow it will be just normal work, not work from the inner circles of Hell. Yay! To celebrate the upcoming liberation (and boost my morale), a few days ago I cast on for a new project from Victorian Lace Today. Officially, it is the “Scarf with the open and solid diamond lace edging from Weldon’s, 1904,” which will henceforth be known as the diamond lace scarf or DLS when I am feeling really lazy.

We love the double YO diamonds! Which are NOT Yo-yos as M seems to think.

The yarn is a cotton cable (with one of the French accent things over the e–I’m too lazy to look up the code for that right now); it is at least sport weight, so my scarf is coming out larger and I went up one needle size to an 8. But I like it very much. I got the cotton as it gets very hot here in summer and super dusty (NO rain for 5-6 months). So this should be cool and hand-washable.

The pattern is written for a different number of repeats of the diamond border than what is shown in the photo and pattern schematic, but the amount of yarn is for the scarf in the photo. This difference is detailed in the corrections, where the pattern for the scarf in the photo is given (the photo scarf has 3 repeats of the border pattern and the pattern is written for four). The photo scarf should be much prettier for two reasons. First, anyone who has watched HGTV knows that the human eye appreciates an odd number of objects or elements more than an even number (hence 3 repeats–each is a point–rather than 4). Second, the body of the scarf has a diamond insertion which is basically staggered motifs of the double YO diamond of the border. For 3 repeats there are 5 stitches in garter stitch on each side of this insertion; for 4 repeats 13 stitches. The diamond insertion will look ridiculously narrow if there are 13 stitches on each side. For more info on scarf patterns that don’t match the photo see Grumperina’s post about her new Dolphin Scarf (which doesn’t have posted corrections). Much as I enjoy the fabulous photography and patterns of VLT, I wish they had done a better job of the technical editing. I am glad that they are posting the errors. When I checked in early January, the corrections was a one page pdf, now is 3 pages long. So, if you are knitting from VLT follow the link above and look for corrections! You’ll be glad you did.

Have a wonderful weekend, and a blessed Easter to all celebrators of the holiday!