My grandson, Isaiah, will be arriving in a couple of weeks. I made this stocking for him out of Cascade 200. The little train is my own design and was knitted with some my hand spun yarn.

It's taken awhile for me to get this swatch posted. I was struggling with the chart and finally just gave up and created an illustration instead.


Also I tried knitting the swatch several times with fingering weight yarn and it just didn't work. So I have knitted the swatch in worsted weight yarn. The title says it is suitable for shawls, stripes, spreads, afghans, etc. but I wouldn't want an afghan or spread out of this stitch pattern — too many holes. I think it would make a lovely scarf out of worsted or maybe even bulky weight. You can find the pattern on my website.
One final note: When passing the stitches over, be careful not to twist.

A Fascinator is a ladies' head scarf. I found this one on the internet. I can see how this pattern would work well for this type of scarf.

According to Wikiapedia: A fascinator is a fashion accessory, more commonly worn by women, on the head or in the hair.[1] While it is simply defined as a head scarf, it may be anything from a small hair piece to a more complicated creation, but generally it is less substantial than a hat. It may be made from many materials, e.g. feathers or lace, and attaches to the head by varying means. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascinator


Here's a swatch and a detail from the swatch from The Art of Knitting 1897 that's titled
Design for Knitting Shawls, Fascinators, Clouds, etc.
A cloud was a little harder to find but here's a description from The Best of Everything.http://tinyurl.com/2y7oln

Or you can click on the clipping below.

I swore I would never knit an afghan — just too boring. Then I found the two Great American Afghan books and got excited. Here's 12 squares and each in entirely different. So I did the Monkey Wrench (that's the one in the middle). It looks ok, but when I thumbed through the books nothing excited me.

So I got out my Barbara Walker Mosaic books and knitted the block on the right. That was fun.

Then I got out Reversible Two-Color Knitting by Jane Neighbors and knitted the center section of the block on the left. It wasn't big enough so I went back to the Mosaic book and found to borders to bring up to the right size.

Now I'm not sure if the center Monkey Wrench really fits in. I guess it will depend on what my next block looks like and right now I'm not sure what I'm going to do next!