Swatching Helps - Even After Beginning the Project

I'm enjoying knitting the Saroyan scarf, but didn't like the way the garter stitch edge rolled severely under the body of the scarf. I had a tip-off that this would happen from reading the project notes on Ravelry, but my personal annoyance with it grew as the scarf started to grow and I decided last night that I needed to do something about it.

I'll admit that I'm not much of a swatcher. When making a sweater, I usually make a swatch to check my gauge, but I always figure that gauge for a scarf isn't terribly critical so am more apt to cast on and go. But, I took the second ball of my yarn and another pair of needles and cast on about 20 stitches and experimented with ways to make the garter stitch edge behave better and came up with something I can live with. I found that making the first stitch of the stockinette stitch body a purl stitch before going to all knit stitches, should help. It doesn't completely cure the curl, but it looks like it will be able to behave once blocked and, for a scarf, which is always being scrunched up anyway, that should be fine.

So, fitting knitting in around dinner and choir practice, I'm done with the increase section and ready to cruise on the middle:

The leaves will open up and be prettier once this is blocked, but you can get an idea of what they are like here: