I recently ordered a bunch of different colorways of Handpainted Yarn’s 6 ply merino. (I did Mel’s scarf with some Malabrigo single ply merino, made by the same company, and just loved the yarn.)

Unfortunately (as I’ve heard has happened with others) the colors aren’t quite as pictured.

Luckily, since I’ve asked friends to email in with their color preferences, this wonderfully soft stuff will find a home, even if some of the colors are not exactly to my taste.

After trying umpteen different pattern stitches and countless frogging sessions, I finally found a stitch pattern I liked with the purple variegated yarn — the My So Called Scarf pattern (which is actually either exactly or close to the stitch pattern of small herringbone (or something similar, sorry, don’t have the book in front of me) from Walker. (I’d checked out the 1968 edition of her stitch dictionary from one of the libraries I frequent just to page through it.)

Anyway, it’s one of those interesting but mindless patterns, if that makes sense; you do something a little different on the different sides and it’s kinda neat understanding how what you’re doing to manipulate the stitches results in the herringbone pattern.