Exchequered vs. Space Invaders

This blog-post is about my first double-knit project.
This summer, I was incredibly lucky to meet somebody new, my now boyfriend Tomas. For me it has always been important that the person I’m dating have an understanding of my interest for knitting and other creative things. I was therefore please that Tomas showed great interest when I offered to knit him a scarf. The picture below shows the result of efforts.

Tomas wearing his new scarf

I started by showing him a lot of scarves patterns at Ravelry.com and based on different patterns we put together a pattern of our own. Mainly based on the Exchequered pattern from Knitty spring 2006, and combined with different versions of Space Invaders.

Now some pictures from the process:

First part of the knitting process

I started by casting on (CO) 32 sts including 2 edge stitches. Gauge is 17cm X 25 rows = 10 cm / 4 inch. Using 4,5 mm double pointed knitting needles.

Second part of the knitting process

Tomas would draw up the pattern as I knit it. The Space Invaders’ pixels were made of 2*2 stitches/rows, with 5 rows between each Space Invader. The Exchequered pattern followed the original pattern quite closely, with pixels made of 3*3 stitches/rows.

The scarf ending in "Game over"

The scarf was made out of 4 parts. First the part of the Spac Invaders. Then the Exchequered pattern follow, and was mirrored. And finally the words GAME OVER were added at the bottom.

The remaining ends were weaved in and the scarf was blocked to the size of 20 cm * 170 cm.

My nerd - Tomas being cosy in his new scarf

In conclusion: This was a wonderful project. A fun and play-full color-pattern. It was challenging to try double knitting, but once I got the hang of it, I really enjoyed it and the results are great. And Tomas loved the result and was very curious about the whole process of making it :D