Rifton: Jill Draper’s Dreamy Unwinding Yarn

I wish you could be right here watching this cake of Jill Draper’s Rifton unwind into this scarf. It’s pretty great. It may be the finest palate cleanser imaginable when you’ve been aiming hard at a complicated project for a while.

Have you ever been to the beach, watching the sun set, letting the day furl itself even as you think it’s never going to end?

The color changes in this Rifton are slow. Even as you expect the change to come, you’re surprised when all of sudden, the dark green is gone.

The pattern is Belinda from our second book, named for our friend who at that time had flown across the ocean to come help us make sense of our unwieldy book project. Belinda Boaden was an eagle-eyed tech editor, a supernatural speed knitter, and she made that book so much better than it otherwise would have been. Belinda totally got what a day could be—she crammed more into an average afternoon than I could fit into a week.

Beyond that, she was as frank a person as I’ve ever met. I recall one summer afternoon with her where we lounged outside as the day ebbed, and she talked about life in her usual acerbic way. The night settled on us like a warm blanket, and we talked the day gone.

It’s looking like this wrap is going to end up a Half Belinda. There’s a thing with this pattern where you knit a strip, then pick up stitches along the edge and knit a second half perpendicular to the first. It looks like plaid, sort of. I am pretty sure that Belinda would have agreed that it’s fine to forge ahead in one direction until the yarn runs out. And, surprised, to have no choice but to call it a day.