Tag: men

Alpaca & Wool Scarf

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Well, I did it! I finally finished my boyfriend’s scarf 3 weeks ago, just in time for him to wear it for the last few weeks of winter.  Thank goodness, because today we have thundershowers – very uncharacteristic March weather for Montreal, Canada.  We are normally still up to our necks – well, up to our knees – in snow, but we have had a steady stream of warm rainy weather over the past couple weeks, so there is very little snow left anywhere.

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Anyway, back to the scarf.  This is my first completed knitting project.  Woohoo!  It’s a really nice feeling.  As I’ve mentioned in other posts, I’ve started and stopped lots of projects over the years, so it feels really good to finally get one under the belt.

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More importantly, my boyfriend has been wearing the scarf, and he loves it.  At 7 ft, it is longer than he is tall.  I guess he was the right incentive.  Now for the matching hat…

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I used Berroco Ultra Alpaca Chunky yarn in sandy brown, and I followed the Christian’s Scarf pattern by Agnes Kutas Knitwear Design which is available as a free download on Ravelry.

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The Scarf

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I LOVE knitting.  I wouldn’t say that I’m at an intermediate level, but I’m not bad.  I especially love discovering new patterns, finding the yarn and then jumping in.  But I have a problem:  I never finish anything!  I get excited about a project, work on it for a few weeks, then my attention wanes and I’m either onto a new one or that’s that.

My G.P. – a wonderful woman and an avid embroiderer – shrugged off my concern with 4 little words:  “we call those WIPs”, she said.  Then she explained:  works in progress or UFOs:  unfinished objects.  “I do Japanese embroidery,” she continued.  “When I work on a project, it’s not a questions of weeks or months, but years.”

“Wow,” I said, “that’s takes dedication and patience.”

So, I’ve started lots of scarves… I shouldn’t feel so bad, right?  And really the problem is that I’m a very slow knitter, because I have arthritis and my hands just don’t move very quickly.  Then again, if I had just stuck to 1 scarf instead of starting 4, I would at least have had a finished one to show for all my hard work.  Sigh…

Well, I have a new challenge:  I have begun a scarf for my boyfriend, and if I don’t finish it, he will never let me hear the end of it.  There is nothing like the fear of eternal mocking to provide incentive 🙂

After slacking off for most of the summer, I have – oh say – another month… month and a half before it gets cold enough for him to need it.  And I may have bitten off more than I can chew, because I’ve sort of promised to knit him the matching hat as well.  I’ve never knit a hat before, so we shall see how that goes.

Above is a picture of my WIP from earlier in the year.  I’m quite a bit farther along now, more than half way through.  I’ll post an updated pic soon.

This is the pattern I’ve chosen:  http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/christians-scarf