Linen Stitch

This Stroll Tonal Yarn from KnitPicks (colour: Stonewashed - now discontinued) was cast on to become the manifestation of an idea I had for a linen stitch shrug.  For me.  Less than halfway done, it decided it would rather be a linen stitch scarf to match the Husbeast's new navy wool pea coat.  I never argue with the yarn so a scarf was born.

To be honest it wasn't much of a sacrifice as these shades of blue work much better on him than on me and the linen stitch was getting tedious; the 10 more inches or so that I would have had to work to make my shrug may have driven me crazy.

Linen stitch is a beautiful stitch.  The resulting fabric is dense and has a woven look and feel to it.  It showcases variegated yarns and yarns with short colour changes beautifully.  It also has a slight masculine quality that makes it a nice choice for men's accessories.  And as an added bonus, both the 'right' and 'wrong' sides of linen stitch are equally lovely, in my opinion.

But,  it is tedious to knit.  I thought it would be meditative. It wasn't.  Especially when each row is 440 stitches long.  By about 4 inches in I was starting to get bored and feel resentful.  I have the same issues with lots of ribbing.  When a pattern says, "work ribbing as established for X inches..."   I usually interpret that as "work ribbing as established until boredom, resentment or dread of the next row of ribbing takes hold..." and adjust the ribbing on socks, cuffs, and waistbands according to my tolerance for it at that time.   For this reason I think I will limit linen stitch to small projects or small areas of projects in future.