I started work on the Henry scarf pattern from the Fall 2007 issue of Knitty, which somehow ended up at the top of my knitting queue. My yarn choice is Elann Peruvian Baby Cashmere, which is an alpaca/merino/cashmere fingering-weight yarn. It’s been a while since I knitted with such fine yarn and the needles (2.75mm and 3.25mm) seem tiny compared to what I’m used to.

But last night I got the cast on done (227 stitches, which are almost doubled in the first row thanks to a yarn-over for every stitch), and I got the first three rows done on the smaller needles, which involves a bunch of slipping and yarn-overs… and I realized after about 440 stitches on the third row that I misread the pattern and had slipped stitches throughout the entire row instead of only slipping the first few stitches and then purling to the end. And after trying to back out a few stitches it seemed like it would be easier to rip everything out and start over. So there was more than two hours of work, gone. So frustrating!

The yarn is very soft but I’ve been having problems with it splitting, which I think is mostly due to the small needles and trying to pick up the yarn-over stitches to knit them. I’m hoping that once I get into the herringbone pattern that won’t happen any more.