Nightmare in Milford

thank you so much for your enthusiastic response to my scarf.  i really would have never finished it if you all hadn't been encouraging me to do so (or daring me to).

it's hard to explain.  it wasn't technically difficult.  but it was a royal pain in the ass.  i couldn't take it anywhere, so i knit it mostly sitting on the guest room bed while watching tapes of "The Young and the Restless." 

sometimes the construction directions didn't make sense, so it took me several tries to get them right (and i'm still not sure i got them right).

even when i was knitting something as simple as garter stitch, it required all of my concentrations. knitting with 2 strands of embroidery wool is annoying and if you don't pay attention you end up with holes and loops where you picked up only one strand.  and then i was always worried that i would run out of a particular color.   i don't know if it was the way i knit, or just errors in the pattern, but half of the time, i was worried that i was going to run out of yarn.  so the finishing sucks.  many times i didn't have enough yarn to weave in, so i was stuck making tiny little knots everywhere.   so don't go asking to see the underside because i won't show it to you. (i'm tempted to line it actually, so that i never have to see those tiny little knots again.)  a couple of times, i did run out, so i made substitutions, which is ok with me, but also tells you that for some other colors, i had tons of yarn left over.  i bought the yarn as a kit, and i triple checked the colors with the list in the book so somewhere something's not quite right.  i shouldn't run out of one color after knitting up a tiny square, and be left with 5 skanks of another.  just doesn't make sense.  i didn't add some of the doo hickeys like buttons and such either.  because c'mon, i'm never going to wear this thing wrapped around my waist.  but somehow my rendition doesn't look nearly as nice to me as the one in the book.  the power of professional photography perhaps?  (i also saw some finished edges in the photos, that are never mentioned in the instructions.  hmmm... so i did my own improvising.)

i love the idea of this scarf though.  i was drawn to it because it was exactly the type of project i would have designed had i been creative enough. it's totally me.  but if i ever do something like this again, i wouldn't use this pattern.  i'd change some of the colors (it's a little too heavy on colors that look like baby shit).

some sections i absolutely love.

but others leave me cold. and i even think are kind of ugly.  oh well.

but it's done!    is it too late to get my medal?

Pattern:  Color on Color Scarf, Scarf Style

Yarn:  Paternayan Persian Wool.