Quick and easy pattern*. The melon stitch is a little fussy to knit, but isn’t that difficult and looks nice. It didn’t take long to memorize the pattern, so it was a good project for traveling. This was a great pattern for using up a relatively small amount of yarn.
Many thanks to KatieK for her notes on the chart, because otherwise I probably would have torn my hair out when I started knitting. (The WS row symbols are charted as they are worked, not as they’re seen from the RS, and the WS rows are worked left to right, even though all numbering is on the right edge.)
For the border, you need to bind off on a WS row, not a RS row, in order to have your yarn in the correct place for knitting the body. I bound off on row 12 by binding off the first 3 stitches as shown in the chart, then just continuing the bindoff across the row. Be sure to bind off loosely.
Used laceweight instead of fingering.
For the melon stitch, I used a “right lifted increase” instead of M1 (lifting the strand between the stitches and knitting into it), because it was easier than trying to lift the strand.
Worked 40 repeats of the chart.
Instead of picking up the stitches onto the needle and then knitting them, I did a “pick-up and knit”.
Did the body in garter stitch instead of stockinette.
Bound off with the Estonian lace bind-off.
I had 17.8 g left after picking up the border stitches. I wasn’t sure that would be enough for the body, so I went down to US 5/3.75mm for the body stitches. It was a good decision, since I had just enough yarn to finish the entire pattern. I bound off on the WS (last row of the pattern), rather than working the WS row and then binding off. I ended up with about 5 yards of yarn left, so I would have had just enough to work the last WS row and then bind-off.
* Although I found the pattern easy, I rated it as medium because it involves short rows, patterning on both RS and WS rows, picking up stitches, and the melon stitch. While none of these are difficult if you’ve done them before, they might be a little challenging for a beginning knitter. (But it would be a great learning project for a beginner who is just getting started with lace.)
10-3-2012 (from my old blog):
Alta Ski Resort was a lovely place to get a modeled shot of my latest finished project, Maluka.
It’s a pretty little scarf made from a skein of Shibui Knits “Cima”, their new laceweight Alpaca/Merino yarn. (The pattern calls for fingering, but it seemed like a good project for using up my single skein of Cima.) It’s fairly easy to knit, although the melon stitch is a little tricky. But you could also just substitute a cable instead, if the melon stitch is too challenging.
Maluka
The border is knit first, then you pick up the stitches along the long edge and knit the body of the scarf. The pattern calls for a stockinette body, but I decided to do garter stitch instead. The scarf is a bit shallower that way, but then there aren’t any issues with it curling.
Pattern: Maluka, by Bea Schmidt
Yarn: Shibui Knits Cima, in “Honey”, 1 skein
Needles: US 6 for the border, US 5 for the body
Modifications: Added additional repeats to the border for a longer scarf, used laceweight yarn, and worked the body in garter stitch instead of stockinette. I started with the US 6 needles, but I changed to US 5 when I started the body, because I was afraid I would run out of yarn. (Good thing I did, since I had exactly enough yarn to finish!)
Fortunately I read some of the other project notes on Ravelry before I started, because it turns out that the chart isn’t written the way most charts I’ve used are. I’m used to seeing all rows of the chart as they look from the right side, so that you have to mentally reverse the knitting symbols as you work the wrong-side rows. On this chart, the symbols on the WS rows are shown the way you work them. This means that a garter stitch section will look like stockinette on the chart (all knits), and a stockinette section will look like garter stitch (knit symbols on the RS rows, and purl symbols on the WS rows, since that’s how you work the stitches). Additionally, the lines are all numbered on the right edge of the chart, even though you work the WS rows from left to right. Whew! Some people rewrote the chart, and I thought about doing that too, but it was easy enough to follow once I knew how it was written.
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