UPDATE:  THE DOWNLOADABLE PDF PATTERN FOR CHANTERELLE HAS BEEN ADDED TO MY KNITTING PATTERNS PAGE, AT THE TAB ABOVE.

A bit more mindless knitting this week past.  I have two balls of Zauberball Crazy, a wildly variegated (and expensive) fingering weight yarn.  Both balls had minor damages to them, and I wanted to work them up quickly.  But I didn’t want to make socks.  This stuff’s colors are so over the top that I wanted to make something that would be seen.  Scarves are ideal.  I’ve done several before using Wingspan and its variants, or other designs calculated to display the gradients to their best effect.  But I wanted to do something different.  I cast on for a couple of designs I found on Ravelry, but wasn’t particularly pleased.

What to do….

Ah.  Thinking back, my most popular pattern of all time is Kureopatora’s Snake.  That was written for a DK weight variegated, and was the result of happy experiment.  It’s basically Entrelac, but slimmed down to just the two edge triangles, and worked over a large number of stitches.  The result is a graceful interlock of trumpet shapes, with the trumpet’s spread accentuated by working a purl into (not just slipping) the K2tog join stitch at the end of each partial row before the turn.

Why not make that one up in fingering weight, and publish the pattern adaptations that make it work?

So I present the first of the two test pieces.  I’ll be starting the second tonight:

First off, I’ve renamed the thing. Now that it’s independent of the original yarn, I re-dub this one “Chanterelle.”  Yes, there are ends (the initial cast-on, bind off, plus a couple of damages).  A personal quirk – I don’t darn in the ends until I am ready to give my knit gift to the recipient.  This will sit un-darned until then.

I will be writing up the full design again under the new name, but for now, start with the Kureopatora’s Snake pattern, available for free at the Knitting Patterns tab at the top of this page.

CHANTERELLE:
A FINGERING-WEIGHT VARIATION OF KUREOPATORA’S SNAKE

Grab your ball of fingering weight variegated yarn.  ONE ball of Zauberball Crazy made this scarf, with only about 3 yards of yarn left over.  It’s about 5 inches wide (a bit under 8 cm), and 66 inches long (a bit under 168 cm).  Gauge is pretty much unimportant.  I recommend a MUCH looser gauge than one would use for socks.  I used a US #5 needle (3.5mm) for this project.

Follow the Kureopatora pattern as written for the initial section, but instead of stopping when you have 30 stitches on the needle, keep going until you have 46.

Work the entire scarf as-written, until you have completed ten full trumpet sections (not counting the partial trumpet done to initiate the project).

Follow the directions for the final finishing section, EXCEPT that instead of working the final section as normal until there are 15 stitches on each needle, keep going until you have 23 stitches on each needle.  Then on every row that begins on the edge of the scarf after that, work a SSK instead of the increase you have been doing throughout the prior sections.

DO NOT STRETCH-BLOCK this piece.  If you feel it’s lumpy, moisten it and pat it flat, but do not use wires or pins to stretch it out.  You want to preserve those graceful curves.