Knitting - Scarf for James

Short version: The first thing I knit was an Irish Hiking Scarf for myself. theblunderbuss has admired it. I have offered to make him a scarf too. :)

I've chosen a yarn for it: I'm planning to use the Cashsoft Aran I got on sale this week, in Thunder/Grey (I have lots of it, more than enough for one scarf). It asks for 4.5mm needles but I don't have any, so I'm thinking 5mm needles for now - I did 5mm and 4mm swatches, and the 4mm swatch was obviously smaller, but the fabric was also harder and rougher than the nice soft result from the 5mm one.

Second, the pattern. The middle's going to be a Saxon braid, which is a six-stranded braided cable. I've found several links for patterns, and they all seem to have two-stitch-wide cables for the braid.

I'm not sure about this. I like the look of the three-stitch-wide cables in the Irish Hiking Scarf, and I'm wondering if the Saxon braid would look good with those.

So I played around with Photoshop and one of the charts of the Saxon braid, and came up with a possible modification to give three-stitch-wide cables. The modified version is the blue outline on the chart.

I'm not sure how the crossing points will work, or if they'll work at all, and it may need a little more length in the non-crossing parts. So my next plan is to convert the chart into a written pattern, then knit one repeat of the original and of the modified version to see which looks best. I may even include photos if I can get my phone or its miniSD card to play nicely with my computer.

ETA: Ah ha! A look for articles on reading knitting charts netted me a chart for a three-stitch wide Saxon braid.

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