Why, hello, Bandwagon, may I jump on too?

I have a love-hate relationship with trends. In general, my stance is a curmudgeonly one. The more people doing something, the more suspicious and disdainful I tend to be. Not intentionally, of course, just automatically. At the same time, I have this rather pronounced weakness when it comes to the power of suggestion.

There are very few web-based knitting trends that have not wooed me. I have never knit a Clapotis and I don't intend to. I have yet to succumb to the siren call of the Jaywalker. I have never knit with Socks that Rock (but that, my friends, is about to change - am I a lucky gal, or what? and are Ashley, Christy, and Julia rocking bloggers, or what? and are schrodinger and I in a contest to see which of us can win the most contests, or what? and am I trying to see how many questions I can ask as an aside, or what?).

But pretty much every other knitting trend has obsessed me at some point, whether or not I actually followed through and knit the thing. Come to think of it, most of the trends that have obsessed me are still knocking around in my head, rather than either on or off my needles. I have spent outrageous amounts of time researching yarns, yarn colors, and yarn prices for patterns I have yet to knit and probably won't knit in the near future (Central Park Hoodie, Seamless Hybrid, Tubey, and Ribby Cardi, I'm looking at you). (Note to self: the amount of time you spend drooling over other people's FOs on Ravelry is inversely related to the amount of time you spend actually completing your own projects.) Oddly (or perhaps completely in character with my curmudgeonly attitude towards trends in general), I tend to be late in jumping on (startling exception: knitting Monkeys with a picot cuff, which I managed to both do and blog before it was cool [but I was not the one that started the trend] ).

So it should come as no surprise to me that I am late to the Chevron Scarf party, but come to the party I have. Like so many others, I got the bug as soon as I saw this one last March. Before long, they were everywhere. Funny how you can have a book on your shelf for 2 years and never once consider a particular pattern in it, and then you see other people's brilliant iterations of it and suddenly you're inspired. Before the Chevron Scarf Parade swept blogland, I never considered knitting it. But show it to me in STR Watermelon Tourmaline and Farmhouse dozens of times, and I'm hooked.

The thing is, I'm not really a bright-color-wearing person (and of course, being a selfish knitter, I have not been planning on knitting this for anyone for my own self). Dude. When you grow up as the girl with the big curly red clown hair, you really don't need anything extra making you stand out. (Please go back and tell that to my 7th grade striped-primary-color-legwarmer-wearing self). I like subtle. I like neutrals. And I love brown and pink.

Enter another skein of Collette's yummy Superwash Supersock fingering weight merino.

What I had in mind was a Chevron Scarf of only soft neutrals, with a tiny bit of pink for pop. After mulling it over, and looking at Collette's past and current offerings, I went for Carrie Lyn, which she was kind enough to custom dye for me.

Inspired by a Nubian goat in Alabama (I love how Collette gets her inspiration. If you haven't already, check out her etsy shop. And big thanks to Jenelle for introducing me to this yarn).
Aren't the colors delicious? I especially love that tiny bit of grey.
I thought this colorway would be a perfect foil for the brown and pink yarn.

What is the secret behind picking out a perfect combination of colorways for the Chevron Scarf? I'm not sure. I know that I would never have thought of Watermelon Tourmaline and Farmhouse on my own. Perhaps it takes a special kind of genius to get the colors just contrasted enough without harming the eyes. But it turns out that if you pick colors that have too much overlap (in my case, each yarn had brown and cream), then you end up with a broad zigzag going up your scarf, rather than the eye-popping chevron lines you're going for.

What's a girl to do?

I don't know yet. I know that I am crazy about this pattern and crazy about this yarn (and these colorways, separately). The pattern is shockingly simple - and surprisingly fast. I can't help but pick this thing up and knit on it a bit here and there, even though I shouldn't do so since I think I'm going to frog and start again. But I'm not sure how to get the effect I'm visualizing. I'm considering just trying the scarf with the brown and pink yarn alone to see if it gets what I'm going for. But I'm open (way open) to suggestions or clues about how to make a Chevron Scarf that is both neutral in colors and still contrasted enough to really show the movement of the chevron lines (in a non-zigzag way, of course).

It's a shame, though, because I really do love these colors. As they slide off my needle, they put me in mind of some of my favorite things: black coffee, coffee with cream, latte, raspberries....






Er, uh, I have no idea why the photos above (imported from flickr) are all off-center....