I do not particularly like chocolate. I do not have cravings for it; neither do I use it as a comfort food. Except with the autumn damp and cold weather and shortening daylight, I often find myself dreaming about the crackle of fire and a mug of something hot and sweet.

Theobroma cacao is the Latin name of the cocoa tree, native in South America. The word theobroma -- the beverage of gods -- refers to the long history of hot cocoa beverages, used not only in the normal everyday life of the Mesoamerican people, but also in ritual activities and offerings. Hot cocoa surely is a divine beverage; not only is it rich in antioxidants, it also contains mood-enhancing alkaloids, such as theobromine.

When designing the stole, I was trying to capture at least some of the characteristics associated with the cocoa tree and cocoa beverage: Warming, cozy, rich and intricate, mood enhancing. Using yarn with alpaca content makes the stole warm despite the laciness of the pattern, and using wooden beads bestows upon the design a bit of ethno charm.

Alternate explanation for 3-into-5 stitch

The 3-into-5 stitch is based on estonian star stitch - the main trick of the stitch is that you knit the 3 stitches (or any number, as seen in Laminaria or Echo Flowers) together as in k3tog, but you do not drop them from the left needle - you continue working through them - make a YO, than you make another knit stitch through the three stitches on your left needle, another YO and another knit stitch - after this, you drop the stitches from the left needle. If this still does not make sense - here is a video showing how to do 2-into-9 stitches - the technique is similar, only you start with 3 and stop at 5 new stitches.

Errata
Chart B
row 9: sl1, k2, continue with the repeated pattern
row 11: work in pattern to 4 stitches before end of row, yo, ssk, k2