FO: Autumn Melody

I hope everyone had a lovely holiday, even if you don't celebrate American Thanksgiving.  I got to go stay Wednesday night with my family at my cousin's house the town over from where I lived during the first two years of grad school.  It was a whirlwind trip, and I had to drive back Thursday night for work on Friday, but it was nice to see my family and check in on my aunt and uncle.  The rest of the holiday has been a whirlwind of work and assorted panicky moments spent staring at a blank notebook, preparing for my defense next week.  I've been seriously clinging to my more simple knits lately.

One not so simple knit that I finished up before the aforementioned computer disaster was my Autumn Melody, knit out of Brooks Farm Solo Silk.

I bought this yarn at SAFF with the last of my yarn money.  I really wanted something that looked like fall but was at a loss until I found this.  It's got some unrecognizable numerical name, but the color is absolutely perfect.  It is dominated by orange and yellows, but also has hints of less obvious colors, including purple.

To knit up this yarn I really wanted something with leaves that would showcase the colors and reflect the foliage for which my region is best known.  The Blue Ridge Parkway is a dominate part of the geography back home and tourists come from all over to see our mountains ablaze with color.  I ended up returning to a pattern that I knit at the beginning of the year in another Brooks Farm yarn.  You can see some similarities, but Autumn Melody looks almost nothing like New Year Flame, both of which are variations of Rose Beck's Unique Melody pattern.  This pattern is representative of what Rose Beck has become known in the knitting community, clearly written with so many customizable options that one can choose from a variety of yarns and sizes.  For Autumn Melody I chose to knit something more akin to a stole, four motifs wide and six body repeats long.  It was a fairly quick knit, very addictive, and used all but a tiny scrap of the yarn.

I've already gotten a lot of use out of it as both a shawl and a drapey scarf.  I never seem to want to knit actual scarves, but I forget how much I enjoy wearing this style.  I'll have to look into making some more as a break from the more typical triangular shawl.