What I've been doing Part III: I sold my soul to the devil for Alpaca

You know it's bad when your own Mother calls and berates you for not updating your blog. She also pulled the cancer card on me, as in "I have cancer, how dare you make me work to see picture of my grandchildren." I know. I'm nervy. But in the hopes of placating her, here's a cute grandchild, right at the top, no scrolling down necessary.



Now on to the knitting. I'm getting paid to knit! How cool is that. Remember that Alpaca I got for Christmas. Well, the farmer who raised those Alpacas has commissioned me to knit some scarves for them. The quintet of nefarious Scarves. At first I thought this project would be so much fun. They sent me eight beautiful, soft, just lovely beyond compare hanks of Alpaca. These hanks were to create four scarves.

• One simple 2x2 ribbed scarf
• One Mobius scarf
• One Scarf/Hood combo
• One textured scarf

It sounds pretty straight forward, but I'm getting an ulcer from this. I'm not just knitting to please myself, using patterns that excite me. I'm trying to please someone else, without really knowing what would please them. They sent me some samples, but they want modifications, and the instructions are all rather vague. I was stunned for a while, just unable to knit anything that looked good. I finally decided to knit what I felt like knitting and they would either like them or they wouldn't. After that things went much faster.

The first scarf is a simple 2x2 ribbed scarf in black alpaca. 60 inches of ribbing on size 5 needles. And we all know how much I love ribbing. *cough*Evil*cough* It took me ages to do. I may flat out refuse to knit another one. It's soaking for some simple blocking so no pictures right now.

Next I turned to the mobius scarf. I tried several, as in eight, different things before finally deciding on a curvy lattice lace stitch, similar to the Print O'the waves pattern I used for the middle of my blue shawl. I knit it flat with a provisional cast on. It is currently blocking. Once it's dry I will use a kitchener stitch to seam the edges together. Here take a peek.





I'm pretty pleased with it, but the farmer was resistant to the idea of a lace scarf, so I have no idea if they'll like it or not.

Now I'm off to knit my next scarf. I'm holding two strands together, and I'm using big needles, so it should go relatively fast. (I hope)