My brioche history is shameful. I was a coward. I procrastinated for over 2  years!

March 2016, I taught myself the basics from this book…Knitting Fresh Brioche by Nancy Marchant

And blogged my sample knits here, “Fun with Brioche, Burping and Barking” and fully intended to make the lovely Glen scarf by Laura Whittington , a pattern sent to my by a friend in New York, Judy Rosenberg.

This pattern–> The Glen Scarf

….then nothing……………….

I was intimidated by the scarf 🙁

The chart was scary and had strange, arcane symbols , resembling rites to appease the mystical knitting Gods!

I felt like a total beginner….

..So Glen sat in my queue, taunting me, “Too hard for you am I? Na nah! Susan can’t do Brioche!”

Now I find myself without ideas for a knitting project for big holiday and long flight…

I’m going to do it! Begone Brioche demons!! I have a white quilted jacket with black zip and details that needed a scarf so dark grey and white it was….I bought the yarn….

I looked at the charts for the pattern and was intimidated all over again 😲

The worst thing was that I had to relearn how to brioche again – fortunately the Nancy Marchant book has excellent, well explained instruction. No only the basic Brioche fabric but several different cast on and cast off, how to make the selvedge edges neat and even how to fix common mistakes (I use this quite a lot!)

Several evenings of study, knitting, frogging, swearing and relearning later I had another sample piece. – fortunately it was easier to learn the second time . It also had the bonus of making Pixie a new fave toy 🙂

The pattern for the Glen scarf actually refers to the brioche book I had. The pattern was also very detailed with clear instructions for a beginner (thank you Laura Whittington!) and the best part – it had the scary charts but also written instruction and very clear instructions for each increase, decrease and technique used.

The brioche is formed in 4 rows. On the right side, knit all the stitches with the white yarn (slide to the other end of the needle) then black yarn across all the stitches, turn the knitting around. Then knit the wrong side with the white (slide to other end of the needle) and knit all the stitches with the black yarn. All the clever increases and decreases to make the pattern are done on the right side, white stitches, leaving 3 fairly easy “plain brioche”rows after. A bit like doing all your lace stitches on the right side and purling on the wrong side 🙂

I managed the first chart  before I left for our holiday at Langkawi Island, Malaysia.

So how far have I got??

After a 14 hour flight (with a lot of sleeping) and several days here in Langkawi…

I have complete 6 of the 8 required pattern repeats!

There have been a lot of errors, swearing and ripping back but I’m getting the hang of it now – even the “evil 5 stitch decrease, at the top of each “blob”, has been mastered.

Even the back isn’t looking too bad…

My tension is getting better as the scarf progresses and I’m ripping back less often but this is still quite tough to master.

Lets see if I can finish in time to return to the UK and the freezing weather – I hear I’ll need a scarf? 😀