I’ve been working on a Prismatic Scarf for a while now, as the project I can work on without having to carry or look at charts. (Can’t miss a minute of Capt. Jack Harkness this week, after all!)
The yarn I’m using is from the Plain & Fancy Sheep and Wool Co., from Henderson, TX. A booth at the Kid ‘n Ewe fiber fair in Boerne, TX had a ton of colorways in two weights, and recently Yarnorama in Paige, TX has been able to stock limited amounts. It’s a single ply wool akin to Malabrigo, in colorways as beautiful as Manos. If you ever get a chance to buy this stuff, I highly recommend it!
I love the built-in I-cord edges in the Prismatic pattern, but I wasn’t thrilled with the reversibility. This is the right side:
And this is the wrong side:
Huan-Hua Chye, the author of the Prismatic, said that she was seeking to eliminate the stockinette-based curl of the Dapper Herringbone Scarf. There’s no curl, but there is some bumpiness on the unblocked swatch, even though I was careful to use Fair Isle technique and not tug the yarn loops too tightly. That minor annoyance aside, the most visually striking aspect of the design is the looping created by slipping stitches wyif. The wrong side is just a diagonal pattern of knits and purls, which doesn’t thrill me.
So I decided to try a no-purl version, replacing purls on the wrong side rows with the same “wyif, slip 3 sts” pattern from the front side. The result was a “wrong side” that looks like the original pattern’s “right side”, and my new “right side” has even bigger, more graphical carry-along loops of yarn. Here’s a comparison swatch of the wrong sides:
And the right sides:
Here are closer pictures of the new right side:
And wrong side:
I don’t have anything against the purl stitch, but I know that some other knitters inexplicably avoid purling whenever possible. In this case the purls were my opportunity to jazz up the wrong side, which had the happy side-effect of eliminating bumpiness and making the scarf perfectly flat and non-curly, even without blocking. The two sides aren’t identical, but I think of it as a more reversible version of the Prismatic scarf, since both sides are equally pretty and graphic in their own way.
So, for those of us who are not as knitty-knowing as you, could you explain it in pattern form? please please? Maybe on Ravelry?
I didn’t want to step on toes by re-making the chart for the pattern; even though the Prismatic is a free pattern, it seemed rude to me. But I’ve added an example to my Ravelry project page to help explain what I did better.
Here’s what I added there:
To clarify the pattern mod – whenever you see purls in the pattern, you should instead slip pwise wyif. For example, the original Row 2 of the Prismatic reads:
Row 2 (WS): k3, *p2, k3, p1* to last 3 sts, sl3 pwise wyif.
My Row 2 is:
Row 2 (WS): k3, *sl2 pwise wyif, k3, sl1 pwise wyif* to last 3 sts, sl3 pwise wyif.
In the body of the scarf you’ll always be slipping 3 sts pwise wyif. The first time you encounter purl/slips at the beginning of the row it may be 1 or 2 instead of 3 sts, depending on where you are in the overall 12 row diagonal pattern repeat. At the end of the row you’ll be slipping anywhere from 3 sts (just the I-cord ones) to 6 sts (the I-cord plus a full 3 st pattern repeat) depending on where you are in the overall 12 row diagonal repeat on that particular row.
[…] I’ve been promising chunky house slippers to my chilly feet for weeks now. I talked in my Prismatic Scarf post about why I love this yarn so much. Isn’t it gorgeous […]
Genius! Thanks for showing your swatches of both versions too!
I am going to start this soon. Thank you for all of your help!
Love the scarf..how to bind off?? after row 12 how should I bind off??
The fabric the scarf makes (no matter whether you follow the original pattern or slip stitches on the WS, like I did) is non-stretchy, so I just did a standard bind off (knit 2, pass the first over the second, knit 1, pass over, repeat to end). If you prefer the k2tog, pass st to left needle, k2tog, etc that one works also. No need for Jeny’s Surprisingly Stretchy Bind Off, since you won’t need to block aggressively the way you would to show off a lace pattern.
thank you for the reply…I’m going with the standard bind off!!