Showing posts with label alpaca. Show all posts
Showing posts with label alpaca. Show all posts

Finished: Rowan Classic Minn by Martin Storey

Friday, September 4, 2009

I have a bad habit - I tend to buy the cheapest thing I can find if it means I can get more of other things. Sometimes this works out (both my wedding gown and wedding ring cost a fraction of what was budgeted for them, and I wouldn't change them for anything!)... and sometimes not (I bought two cheap hair straighteners before giving up and buying the good, expensive ones). My fiancé likes to remind me: the best I can afford, not the cheapest I can tolerate.

When I decided to finally knit myself a scarf (a first), I decided to apply his theory and make it a scarf to end all scarves. I wanted it to be something that I would wear for years and years to come. Soft, luxurious, warm, no matter the cost. The pattern I chose was Minn from the Rowan Classic AM to PM booklet (also Suuri käsityölehti 10/2007), designed by Martin Storey.

When a friend of mine from Australia, David, visited Finland last summer, we took a walk around Helsinki and had lunch under the awning of a café, watching people hurry in the rain. When the weather cleared out, I asked him if he'd accompany me to a yarn shop to buy yarn for my scarf. He did, and the product of such a shopping trip was 9 skeins of vividly red Garnstudio DROPS Silke Alpaca (80% baby alpaca / 20% silk). The yarn set me back nearly 50 euros, but it being the softest yarn in the shop, I had to have it.

I didn't get started on the scarf until February this year after finishing a few scarves for other people for the past winter. Mine could wait; I had the rest of my life to wear it. It was slow going, mostly due to periodical project hibernation, the frogging of half of the scarf at one point (one of the cables was going the wrong way, and This Would Not Do) and misplacing the needles on our trip to London.

Yesterday, however, the scarf was complete. It is the softest, warmest thing you could ever wrap around your neck. I can't wait for November!

 
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