Soft and Warm

One of the knitting newsletters I follow featured brioche stitch yesterday. The concept intrigued me --what's not to like in the thought of a sweet soft, airy fabric--but I just couldn't figure out how to do the stitch from the instructions provided. I had a look around on the internet, but I was still stumped. On opening one of my favourite stitch dictionaries, I came across fisherman's rib. OK, fisherman's rib it is then. I had 25 grams of a hand-dyed baby yarn. I cast on 25 stitches and off I went.

I loved getting the effect of a rib stitch without the to-ing and fro-ing of alternating knits and purls. Admittedly the 25 grams didn't go very far, but it was enough for a little neck-warmer. This is breast cancer awareness week, so my choice of a soft pink was no accident.

And just for the sake of completeness and satisfaction--I did get back to the brioche stitch in the evening. I found this blog post which solved some of my puzzles. I now have a little sample of the brioche stitch. Frankly I can't see much difference between it and the fisherman's rib and the brioche is not as sweet to knit, but it does have some exciting possibilities which I'd like to explore some time.