Scarves!!

I just finished making a small scarf/neckwarmer, so I figured this would also be a good time to blog about a couple of other scarves I made in February, and never got around to writing about.

I'll start with my latest scarf.



The pattern is the Alpine Frost Scarf, by Amy O'Neill Houck from the Interweave Crochet magazine, winter 2008. I used some unknown lilac cotton yarn that I got from a charity shop ages ago. I had two balls of it, and was going to make a longer scarf, but my mum's birthday was coming up, and I was trying to think of what I could get her while I was making it. Then I remembered she likes purple. Then I looked down, and thought that it would be perfect for her. I decided to split the two balls, as it were, and make two small, separate scarves. It's spring anyway, and it's getting too warm to wear a huge long scarf. One ball of the cotton made a 30" scarf, which, when I held it up to my neck, looked like it would be quite cute with a brooch or pin. So I made the two of them (it worked up super fast, and the cotton was lovely and cool to work with, it felt very soft and smooth!) and went in search of a brooch. Apparently, however, they've become totally unfashionable sometime in the recent past, at least according to most of the shops I went in, which didn't stock any!!! What's that all about? Mum buys them all the time, and wears them, yet I couldn't find any. As a last resort I went into Debenhams, and browsed the jewellery dept. Luckily, they had some. I got the butterfly brooch in the picture for myself, and I got her a purple one shaped like a fan.

My gauge was totally different for this project, because the yarn I was using was fingering weight, nearly dk, instead of laceweight, so I chained less stitches at the beginning, so I had 39 instead of 57 or whatever it is you need to start (I can't quite remember just now). That, and making it shorter was the only mods I made.

In February, I made two scarves. The first one I made was another version of the Luna Lovegood scarf, this time in a bronzey colour. It actually looked gold in the ball, but it's better that it worked up bronze - that's one of the Ravenclaw colours!



I love this scarf pattern! I've made two now, the bronze one and one in silvery grey, and I have a yarn in my stash that I'm thinking would be nice in this pattern too. The Luna Lovegood scarves are the ones I seem to be wearing the most just now. It's a perfect length for wrapping around my neck once then tying in a knot, and it hangs down to my waist. You wouldn't think it would be warm because it's so open, but it's great!

The 2nd scarf was this one:




The pattern is cable scarf 1 by Dagmara (rav link). Again, my yarn was heavier than that used in the pattern, so I had to halve the stitch count in the pattern. It wasn't too hard to modify though, once I'd read the pattern through and figured out what was going on. I had three balls of mohair yarn that I got off ebay specially for this project (I saw it come up in my friend activity on ravelry, and couldn't get it out of my head). I just knit the pattern till the balls were used up, and this was all the yarn that was left over:



I really like this scarf. The yarn softened up after a wash with some conditioner, and it's very organic and fluffy. Very warm too!!