Pattern updated from v. 1.2 to 1.3 on 2010-02-05 to fix chart issue in WS edging symbols, and add a link to a no-purl mod for the scarf.
Pattern updated from v. 1.1 to v. 1.2 on 2008-12-02: Please note that because of a modification to the chart symbols, the pattern is now only available as a PDF download via Ravelry (you do not need to have a login to download the pattern). The instructions are more or less the same as before, but I’ve modified a few things in the pattern writeup that people were finding confusing: among other things, I changed the chart to use standard symbols instead of the ambiguous “k” and “p,” started the pattern on a RS row instead of a WS row, and included the i-cord edging instructions in the main part of the pattern. Please let me know if you find any problems and I’ll fix them in the next revision. Happy knitting!
Ravelry page /Ravelry PDF download (this is a clean, printable version of this pattern, with most of the pictures taken out).
This scarf uses an unvented stitch pattern based on Barbara Walker‘s Woven Diagonal Herringbone stitch pattern from A Treasury of Knitting Patterns.
I wanted to find a scarf pattern other than the ubiquitous My So-Called Scarf or Clapotis that would show off a variegated yarn nicely. Nothing wrong with MSCS (well, it’s not really reversible, and I’ve heard from some people that it curls) or the Clap (well, since it’s knit on the bias, it’s hard to estimate exactly how much yarn you need to finish and knit until you run out of yarn; also, it’s not warm unless you make it big enough to counteract the open dropped stitches). Anyway, I just wanted something different!
When I was back at home for Thanksgiving 2007, my mom bought me two skeins of absolutely gorgeous Manos Silk Blend in Wildflowers.
Once I started to swatch with it I realized that it was hard to find a pattern that would showcase the colors in the yarn –there were so many different colors, the stitch patterns I was trying out kept getting lost, and the yarn just ended up looking like clown barf. (Albeit very expensive clown barf from a clown with a belly full of Necco wafers.) At first, I thought the half-linen stitch would be nice, but after knitting up an entire skein of the yarn in this stitch, I realized that it just curled too much. It looked deceptively flat at first, but the more I knit, the more it curled.
So that was out. I made another scarf’s worth of swatches with different stitch patterns. Even my old standby, feather and fan, looked like crap.
I had been admiring Knitting Kninja’s Dapper Herringbone Scarf pattern using the Woven Diagonal Herringbone stitch–so very dapper!–so I swatched with that, and liked it a lot. Slipping stitches is a good way to deal with variegated yarns because of the way it lengthens color runs and breaks up the sea of blips of color.
I made a couple of little adjustments to suit my taste, though:
- I wanted a stitch pattern that would lie perfectly flat–the slipped stitches do restrain curling, but after my experience with the half linen stitch mega-swatch, I was feeling very leery of mostly-stockinette patterns and wanted a balanced knit/purl pattern;
- I wanted a stitch pattern that would still look reversible in a busy yarn like the Manos–while Kristen’s version looks perfect in her simple, single color, the reverse side of mine ended up just looking like reverse stockinette stitch, as the diagonal pattern of elongated slipped stitches was lost in the color-barf;
- I wanted a very clean selvage. Mine was looking kind of wonky.
So I added purl stitches to go behind the slipped stitches, balancing the mostly stockinette fabric, and creating a slipped diagonal rib on the wrong side; and I added a very satisfying and clean knitted-in i-cord selvage.
I’m calling the result the Prismatic Scarf, for the way it refracts the random mixture of hues into strong, slanting rays of color.
100% sheep-approved!
Close-ups of the i-cord selvage:
Here’s a swatch I worked up in 100purewool.com‘s 3-ply worsted merino, colorway “Analis”, so you can see the effect in a yarn with fewer colors:
Yarn used: Manos del Uruguay Silk Blend (30% silk, 70% merino wool; 50 grams; 150 yards) in 3113 Wildflowers, two skeins
Needle size: US size 8/5.0 mm
Finished dimensions: 5″ x 65″ before blocking, 5″ x 68″ after blocking
Oh, nice! I have had a few people ask about curling, and while mine doesn’t curl much, it does want to. That’s a brilliant way to solve the problem! I’m linking back to you from mine, if’n you don’t mind.
[…] Pattern: The Prismatic Scarf […]
i totally love it! queuing it immediately in ravelry 🙂
[…] Feather and Fan made some really excellent adaptations to this pattern. Her version is called the Prismatic Scarf, and it works really well with any variegated yarns as well as eliminating any possible tendency to […]
Great pattern! I spent my weekend swatching for a scarf wanting the same qualities of non-clown-barfyness and lay-flattyness. I should have just come here.
[…] I made to post about next time, but in the meantime, here are some beautiful photos of a beautiful Prismatic Scarf made by a Raveler named JellyJ. She used Malabrigo in Autumn Forest and I think her photos and […]
[…] or download the pattern here. (It’s available as a free Ravelry PDF […]
[…] to work on while doing some other things, PLUS it’s Malabrigo March, so I cast on for the Prismatic Scarf.. That’s a blog link, but it’s also available on Ravelry as a free download. The […]
[…] I really like the Prismatic Scarf. […]
[…] will become The Prismatic Scarf. (Even though I won’t have any use for a scarf for a while, I’m very anxious to cast on […]
[…] is still going well, but I couldn’t take too much time off from knitting. I started up a Prismatic Scarf, from Feather and Fan. And it’s looking […]
[…] been itching to get my hands into this for awhile now, ever since orata started knitting her prismatic scarf. Ooooo. Silllllk. You all know I loves me some silk. I had been looking at both this and the Sheep […]
[…] left to right, the stitch patterns are: the ‘prismatic’ diagonal herringbone from this scarf on Feather and Fan, stockinette, seed, an unvented garter rib, stockinette, triple rib. […]
Hi–I have a question about the chart. Feel dumb because others seem to get it!
It says to read it from lower left-hand corner, but that starts with k3. Instructions say k3 , then follow pattern on 24 sts, so is first row actually k6?
Jeannette, I wrote back to you on Ravelry, this is just a confusing choice of symbols. It may help to read the “k” and “p” as the more standard | and – symbols. In other words, “k” is only a knit stitch on the RIGHT SIDE of the work, and represents a purl stitch on the WRONG SIDE of the work. Since this starts on the WS, the first “k” you encounter is actually going to be a purl stitch. Sorry about the confusing choice of symbols–it may help to follow the written directions for the first repeat.
I laughed out loud when I saw the long swatch of failed attempts. (not failed, but unsatisfactory)- looked very familiar. I have done SO much experimenting trying to get handpainted yarns to look unstripey and unblotchy when knit, and in the end have collected dozens of ideas. I wish I were more into scarves, that would be a good use of them, but usually I like sweaters so I have not used many of them (too $$$), but I would love to compare notes- I live in Madison too, just email…
[…] har begynt pĂĄ et prismatic scarf i Vero fra Naturally. Jeg er godt fornøyd med bĂĄde mønster og […]
[…] Zum ersten ein Schal fĂĽr meinen Sohnemann. Muster ist The Prismatic Scarf […]
[…] NĂĄ har mannen min fĂĄtt en lue som matcher skjerfet jeg skrev om for en stund siden. Han ser ut til ĂĄ være fornøyd. Oppskrifter finnes her: lue, skjerf. […]
[…] and it is a joy to knit. Soft and smooth, and hopefully it wil turn out well. I am trying The Prismatic Scarf from Feather and Fan – I can’t wait to see how the colors work out. She has alot of lovely […]
[…] is my version of the Prismatic Scarf which I finished up a few weeks ago. It still needs to be blocked (stretched and set into shape) […]
[…] know what’s coming….. Â This is the scotty’s sunflower yarn knitted up using the Prismatic scarf pattern. A lovely pattern and it has great stitch definition in the original pictures so I’m […]
You have found a good solution to the problems you mentioned. I do wish that knitting patterns would state indicate whether they are ‘reversible’ and that BOTH sides would be shown in illustrations of patterns. I make a lot of scarves, and there are patterns I have to avoid because they look so horrible (e.g. reverse stocking) on the other side. Being pretty much a novice and unable to visualize what the ‘wrong’ side will look like, I often have to do a big swatch before I know how well the pattern works….
[…] Chye, the author of the Prismatic, said that she was seeking to eliminate the stockinette-based curl of the Dapper Herringbone Scarf. […]
Love this pattern! Which of course means I had to fiddle with it, as any knitter would. I’m very new to wordpress and don’t know if my post will show up in your trackback thingie, but I’ve written about my no-purl mod at http://thetexturedknitter.wordpress.com/2009/07/21/prismatic-scarf/. Feel free to add it as a variant to your pattern if you like it!
[…] silver and grey and shadowy and wintry, but there’s a subtle brown in there too. Pattern is the Prismatic Scarf, simple and really, really effective. Perfect for showing off the glints and gleams of this […]
[…] Prismatic scarf, ravelry link, blog link Yarn: Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino in Black <—– this is a really scrummy yarn and I […]
[…] I made a couple of updates to the Prismatic Scarf pattern, to fix a chart issue on the WS rows in the i-cord edging, and to add a link to The Textured […]
[…] making the Prismatic Scarf, AKA Silver Sands, for my lovely Mumini: it’s nearly finished, so I’m using the last […]
[…] the variegation — after all, there’s no bad yarn, just misplaced. Â I settled on the Prismatic Scarf: Soft […]
[…] better! Found one atlast… May be I would give a try to The Prismatic Scarf as […]
[…] you’d like to try out the pattern, click here for more information and the pattern. If you’re on ravelry, search for the Prismatic Scarf by […]
I sure do thank you for the well-thought-out pattern. I’ve always loved many of the verigated yarns, but was often disappointed with the pooling of colors in the finished item. This re-invention of Barbara Walker’s stitch is perfect. The iCord being knit right along with the body of the scarf is something I’d never run into before, and I just love it. I’m sure I’ll incorporate that into many more projects.
Another thing I greatly appreciated was the short “In Other Words” paragraph after the line-by-line directions. It’s worded so precisely that it saved me a tremendous amount of time. I’m certain I would have had to repeat the pattern rows quite a few times before it clicked in to see the simplicity of “reading the stitch pattern”. How very clever of you!
I’m looking forward to seeing more of your projects in the future.
I have a question for you, I am overanalyzing that instruction on Barbara’s directional herringbone stitch. I’ve got the RS part okay, but when it comes to the WS Purl Row. How do you handle the wyif yarn lay over on the RS row. Do you stitch the first as two or am I doing the the slip three wyif, knit three wrong? I am stitching the yarn directly into the knit stitch after holding it wyif, or should I return the yarn back to the back btw the needles then knit the stitch. This is holding me up on the pattern, thanks much and love the pictures of this scarf, will definite look this one up.
Love this pattern and stitch….would love instructions on how to….
This pattern is extremely confusing. I tried it and messed up terribly. When you slip one are you bringing the yarn to the front each time? I think that’s my problem.
This is terrific, I aim to try this out very soon, thank you for all the info on your experiments with the yarn, it was very enlightening. I am just beginning to draw up my own patterns and it has given me food for thought.
[…] Ă l’option de recherche de projets associĂ©s Ă un fil), je suis tombĂ©e sur le patron de The Prismatic Scarf de Huan-Hua Chye qui m’a immĂ©diatement tapĂ© dans l’œil (et ça fait mĂŞme pas […]
[…] textures and colours. We found this on movitabeaucoup.com, but you can find the pattern on Feather and Fan. What we love about this particular one is actually the descriptive article and pictures that come […]
You are terrific at figuring out how to achieve your goals. I was looking for a way to use variegated yarn and thought I’d try your scarf pattern. Before beginning my little swatch, I read your goals for your unvented stitch/scarf–balanced stitches, which I wouldn’t have known how to design into the BW herringbone, a nice selvage–with your terrific built-in but very modest I-cord, reversible–a truly hard quality to find (though, now that I’ve looked at your step by step photos, mine seems more different on the reverse than your photos show though mine is still completely reversible.). And your pattern meets my own desire for texture and visual interest in the stitch.
It’s a real winner–and I am SO envious of your ability to analyze and design your stitches to achieve the qualities you want; I am limited to stitch dictionaries. What a great job and terrific ability. Thank you for posting this pattern–and all the description.