River Rock Scarf attempt

I tried working on a River Rock Scarf but I wanted to use yarn & beads that I already had. I've never seen the yarn called for in the pattern & no, I didn't do a swatch. It's a scarf -- I usually don't do swatches for a scarf. I really should have this time.

The yarn I used is some handdyed silk/ [cough] cashmere [cough] yarn that's 28/2. I bought it years ago for weaving with (hence the 28/2 which I've totally forgotten the meaning of), before learning to knit, but was too chicken and stuck it in a bin with 2 solid colored skeins of silk. I used this one (despite the goat content) since it has multiple colors. I didn't have enough beads of one color so I dumped several together & stung them randomly. I briefly considered trying to string the beads so that each "rock" would be a single color (because my brain just doesn't do random well) but ditched that in favor of remaining sane. After showing my strung bead mix to about 6 different people & getting positive comments, I finally decided they were right (I really don't do random well.) and cast on.


I started out of size 6 needles, went down to 4 (don't have 5's), and then 3's. I can see lots & lots of mistakes where the beads don't line up but not a large difference in the needle size. I'm sure I didn't do enough rows with each one. I'm going to frog it & start over with the 3's. It's going to look very different than the one in the book but I think it'll be neat in the end.








6/17 update: I started it again on size 3 needles. I think it looks a lot better. The beads like to slide out of position though. I finished the border and I'm getting ready to start the body.