wham, bam, and thank you, ma'am

amazingly, holiday knitting actually continues. i have completed another project, this for s's sister. i am so pleased with this scarf, and surprised i am so into scarves again. with a more evolved knitting-skill-set comes more exciting scarves, i guess, and with a cold neck comes the desire for soft warm neck coverings for me and for those i love. so here i am, for the first time since the multidirectional scarf fever of '05, becoming once again obsessed with scarves.

i have been thinking about the first scarf i made for s, out of lion's brand homespun (he still totally hearts it), and how it was just straight-up garter stitch, on BIG needles. i then made him one of the aforementioned multidirectional scarves, out of noro silk garden (of course!) and have plans for another. i received some knitpicks panache, which is tre soft and oh-so-loverly, in a color surprisingly similar to this debbie bliss, and one look at that next to my baby's eyes, and i knew it was destined for him. i am thinking cables, maybe sharfik or the shifting sands scarf (okay, so i heart grumperina, who cares?!?!?!) or maybe a cabled scarf of my own design.

this project i finished on sunday is a coming-around-full-circle-type of thang. years ago, when i first began knitting, when i first started stalking the yarn stores in town, when i first discovered what a fabulous resource the internet was for knitting, i ran across the dna-cable scarf. wowza. what a scarf, i thought. i NEED TO HAVE THAT. so, i ran out and bought the yummiest softest most wonderfulest yarn i could afford, debbie bliss cashmerino, in a teal-y dusty blue, ooh, baby, and i casted on. and, i did okay. not perfectly, but, for a first cabling attempt, i did okay.

see? a little bumpy, but not HORRIBLE for a first cable project

but then i got sick of it, not so much the yarn or the pattern, but sick of the concentration it took, and sick of KNOWING, even as i continued to knit, that i had definitely f'd up at the very very beginning and i absolutely NEEDED to frog it all and restart, but, gosh, i sure as heck didn't want to do that. so i put it down, and it got buried amongst the many other projects i had abandoned, and i found myself, about a month ago, pulling it out and looking at it once again. i knew that scarves and socks were going to be my big xmas gifts this year, and i had just re-started midwest moonlight, knowing that my dear sweet sil was going to be getting it (she lives in the midwest, get it???), and i thought - gosh, this yarn is way too fab to go to waste. i am gonna make up a scarf pattern for it. i hauled out all of my scarf, lace, shawl, and pattern books, and began pouring through them. i kept coming back to the traveling vine pattern in one of the many shawl books i have accumulated through the years, fumbled my way through a few fits and starts, and a week later, viola!

talk about yummy. and finished. and blocking.

dets:

traveling vine-lace-patterned scarf (still trying to come up with a name for it)

yarn: debblie bliss cashmerino, teal-y blue, 3.5 balls

needles: addi turbo #8s, smooth as silk