That herringbone stitch I came across while shopping at Ninian haunted me until I purchased this Racket scarf from them. It has the same pattern.
With a closer view you can perhaps make out the zig-zag traveling stockinette stitches. It looks the same on both sides so it’s some sort of interlocking double knit stitch. It’s still a mystery to me how this is done. I couldn’t find it in any stitch book and haven’t found time to decipher it. I’m pretty sure it’s machine made.
Check out the cute tag on the side.
Purlwise 
I wonder if it’s similar to Henry at Knitty, http://knitty.com/ISSUEfall07/PATThenry.html, which intrigues me but I don’t quite understand yet, so I just might have to knit it to figure it out. 🙂
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Barbara Walker, book #1 has the pattern, as referenced by the ‘Henry’ pattern at Knitty daht com.
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Thanks for the ideas but I already checked. The pattern in BW’s book uses slipped stitches and this has only traveling stitches.
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Its “racked rib”, knitted on a machine. The racking handle moves the front bed of the machine one stitch to the left or right according to the direction you want to move the stitch in. She would probably move 5 times to the right and then 5 times to the left. Repeating until the length required was reached. Even on a machine this is quite time consumeing, but can be done much more quickly using a power frame machine. If hand knitting could try a traveling stitch moving only the knit stitches. Not quite the same, but could be similar.
p.s. Nice to see photos of your visit to our cold and windy isles.
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Yes, racked rib it is! I used to make this with the Passap machine I had. I was labor intensive even on the Passap.
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I was just playing around with this by hand.
I was able to recreate something that looks somewhat like the picture you have.
k1,p1 across
Left Twist across
p1,k1 across
k1, Left Twist across to 1 st, p
k1, p1 across
p1, Right Twist across to 1 st, k
p1, k1 across
right twist across
I worked the left twists by as cables w/o cable needle, and the right twists as knit second stitch, then purl 1st stitch.
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