Andrea's Christmas Scarf (Part One)

I'm extremely happy that Christmas is over. All the last minute knitting, beading, and paper crafting is done! Everyone has their gifts, and they seemed pleased with them.

Now I can reveal what I've been working on for the last two weeks. I made my sister a lace scarf. the Lace Ribbon Scarf by Veronik Avery. I used a yarn I purchased a long time ago, Sweet Feet by Hill Country Yarns. I love this pattern. I endlessly adore it. The repeats are simple and easy to memorize, yet the the finished project is gorgeous. I'm not totally in love with how the decreases were handled, but I don't know of a better alternative.

Although this project is worked up in fingering weight yarn, it seems to knit up very quickly. My perspective may be a bit distorted; the lace chart is addicting and makes time fly by.

I'm not sure how many hours I have spent on this. I always need to have something going on in the background while I knit. With the Kimono Shawl, it was Pride and Prejudice (both audiobook, BBC version, and American movie). With Yggdrasil, I hunted down as many movies I could that I wanted to see. However, I've seen a lot of movies. I own a lot of movies. I am also very picky about the movies I like.

I was running out of things to watch. So I decided to pick up a series I've been avoiding for the last 7 years: LOST. When it first premiered I watched the pilot episode. I wasn't intrigued enough to continue watching. By the second and third season, as it gathered a rather rabid fan base, I wanted to watch it but it's not a show you can just jump into mid season. I didn't have the time to get caught up on the first seasons in order for it to make sense. So I've never seen it.

Enter Andrea's Scarf. I suddenly have this long lace scarf that needs to be done in less than two weeks, and it's made in fingering weight. It was going to take a lot of hours to finish, and I needed something to keep me entertained while I knit. And knit. And knit. I also picked up the first season of Deadwood, which is a great show but when I watched the first episode of Lost Deadwood got relegated to the back corner.

After 13 episodes of Lost, I completed 11 repeats of the scarf. I think I averaged a little over an hour per repeat, (1000 sts). This is a rough estimate as I've never timed a repeat. There's also interruptions like changing to the next episode, marking the completed rows in Photoshop, and recording my rows in Ravelry. If I have time, I'd like to track exactly how long each repeat takes. Then I could geek out a bit.

As it's a lace scarf, several repeats in I put it on my blocking boards and stretched it out so that I could see the lace pattern.