Entrelac Experiment

I have loved the look of entrelac knitting, but never been brave enough to try it. Recently I found a free ebook with directions for entrelac knitting. So today while waiting for the grass to dry enough to mow (it never happened. Thanks rain!) I broke out the ebook and attempted entrelac for the first time. I have to say entrelac was not as scary as I expected. The basic pattern that I followed used nothing more complicated than purling two stitches together. However, I quickly found that this technique incorporates the two things I dread most in knitting - short rows and weaving in scraggly ends. 

I love the way my test swatch turned out, but I think it is going to be a while before i try this technique again. Maybe I will like entrelac more after I teach myself to knit backwards so I don't have to spend as much time turning at the end of each row. 

The base triangles were fairly easy to do.

First color switch. I was very happy to see that my swatch looked like the one in the picture!

First row of alternate color complete! This is the point that I began to growl at the short rows and realize there would be a lot of scraggly ends from color shifting.

Couple more rows and color changes complete. I love the woven look of the fabric, but not enough to play with this technique any time soon.

Here is the finished swatch.  I am not happy with how the final row of triangles turned out. I feel like some directions may have been missing. I managed to muddle through and get the swatch off the needles.

The back side of the fabric isn't as ugly as I was expecting, but I would definitely cover it somehow if I made a scarf or afghan using entrelac.

I am pretty impressed with how this turned out. I have come a long way in my knitting abilities in the last two years.