Brioche - a form of knitting that produces a fantastic reversible effect. It's tricky and pretty.

Of course, it's another 'dive in the deep end' and I went straight for two-colour. Working with two colours, you work across a row with one, slide the knitting back, and work the other colour, before turning to work the other side. It involves yarn overs and slip stitches in sequence which links the knitting yet dropping one colour behind the other.

And you have to get it right.

After three days of knitting, ripping out, knitting, ripping out, etc ad infinitum, I now have a few inches correctly formed.

Yes, it's a scarf. That tells you how tricky this technique is, as the other scarves I knit are generally in complicated cobweb lace.

Syncopated brioche occurs later in the pattern - essentially this reverses the standing colours - in diagonals, diamonds and stairstep shapes.

So lots more complicated stuff to come ... I might actually finish the lace silk scarf just as a respite for my brain!

The pattern is the Geveldak scarf taken from Knitting Brioche by Nancy Marchant, available on Amazon (other book selling merchants are available).

After, I had posted, I noticed a mistake halfway down the pink side of the knitting:


Now, I wasn't inclined to rip back 4" of hard won knitting, but I'd ripped back and re-knitted enough times to have acquired some knowledge of the formation of the stitches.

Using pins and a cushion (to stick the pins in), I unlocked the pink stitches down to the mistake, corrected the position of the brown strand and, using a crochet hook, hooked them back up. Hey presto, fixed:

Ok, we know by now I don't shirk at a challenge, so I've set myself a challenge and given myself a year to complete it.

Years ago I crocheted a rather filet shawl, a year or two ago I had a go at a couple of granny squares, a month ago I had a go at amigurumi, in the last two weeks or so, a bag. And so a bigger challenge is in order.

In Sue Whiting's Crochet Bible is a rather lovely project called Heirloom Bedspread (incidentally this is where the Peruvian Style Bag also came from). It is formed from 255 motifs in 4-ply cotton using a 2.5 mm hook.

One motif done, 254 to go ....

I decided on a larger crochet project as I'd got my head around arimugumi.

And I thought I'd make something for myself, so I decided on a bag.

To add some spice, I went for something that involved multiple mid-row colour changes - always after a challenge!

Well, it wasn't as quick, or as easy as I'd thought something made purely of double crochet would be.

First, multiple colour changes meant dealing with lots of strands. I finally settled on a method whereby I would strand across 4 stitches maximum otherwise join a new strand in.

Second, I didn't realise quite how important the 'turn' was at the end of each round - to match the handles the 'turn' had to be done.