Experience, it's all in the experience

Do you see these?

These are the two scarves I have knit myself over the years. Yes, I have in fact only knit myself two separate scarves. All those other scarves that some of you may have seen on my needles were for other people and have found what I hope are happy homes with them.

Let's take a closer look at them...

Yeah, that one on the right is looking a bit ragged, no? It has it's reasons and they are not the poor scarf's fault. You see this is the first thing I knit. EVER. Yeah, so it's at least a decade old. The poor things ends are coming loose because quite frankly, I didn't do them properly. Why not? I didn't know how.

This poor doomed scarf is a simple garter stitch that I cast on length-wise and knit until I had the knit stitch down. He's a bit wonky in places due to uneven stitch tension, and I didn't know the striping would be odd on one side, I didn't know that I wouldn't have a lovely flat texture and if I did know how to purl to get that texture that I would have fought the scarf fighting over the last decade. But, I learned, and in the decade that I've been knitting, I've learned a lot.

Enter my new scarf I just took off the needles.

Isn't he handsome? It's a brioche cable that's reversible on either side in Classic Elite's Chalet which is a 70% baby alpaca-30% bamboo viscose plyed in a chain. It's lofty, cushy as can be and in a charcoal grey that goes with all my winter jackets. I'm in love.

I originally tried to knit this scarf a few years back when I saw another local knitter working on it. We didn't get along so well and without her aid I couldn't figure out Brioche from the resources I found at the time. This past year Kurtis at the Rocky Mountain Mens Knitting Retreat taught a brioche class. It was one of those "duh" moments from the start. It was so simple, I just needed to see someone do it. Once I had that down I came home and promptly forgot about my own scarf trudging along with my trusty old wool one that had seen me through as many Wyoming Winters as Alaskan ones. Then one day I got done with all the Christmas knitting and remembered that pattern. When I printed it off I immediately thought of this wonderful cream yarn I had seen at our yarn store. I bought the only 3 remaining skeins and got to it. I quickly wrapped up a beautiful scarf but it wasn't to be mine. The cream just wasn't my color but it got so many Wow's that I ended up using it for a model and teaching a class this last month on this scarf.

During class I picked out the charcoal yarn that was ordered just for us and after finally getting to work on a project for my, my new scarf is finished. Though my trusty old scarf has seen better days, I will still put him away in the hat and glove box for when I care about warmth and not looks. There are still days that I simply need something to keep the drafts from my zipper and collar line and something to pull up over my chin as I walk into the wind driven snow. He may be old, and maybe not so pretty, but he has a lot of warmth left in his battered wool.