Unlike Pam, who likes her scarves short, just barely long enough to cover her neck and tuck in her jacket, my mom likes her scarves long and wide. Mom’s scarves get wrapped over the head, around the neck, and tucked in. Mom likes her scarves huge and warm!

One of the nice things about hand-knitting Christmas scarves is that I can make Pam’s small the way she likes it and make Mom’s huge the way she likes hers.

I remember mom walking across campus at the University of Wisconsin attending plays and musical events – and I remember her being cold. Ever since we’ve gotten alpacas, I’ve been wanting to make her a nice, warm, dressy scarf to wear to these events. Campus has changed. I think she still attends the events. I have no idea if she needs a dressy, black, scarf, but I had this wonderful alpaca yarn that Mette produced for us – yarn with fiber from Percy and Del among others. And, mom rather liked Percy, so …

Mom got a scarf for Christmas.

The pattern is a very basic garter stitch. The scarf is about six feet long – maybe longer – and just over a foot wide. That’s 40 stitches on size #10 (6.0 mm) needles. The garter stitch is very simple, but it makes for a nice, springy, scarf and it ought to be warm. I love – I mean love – the way the fabric turned out. The fabric of the scarf is just wonderful. There is no way I could have achieved this feel with crochet. I’m so glad I learned to knit. I love crochet. I do fun things with crochet. I do good work with crochet. But, I can only make an alpaca fabric like this by knitting.

There is a story behind the starting of this scarf. I knew I wanted a wide scarf. I don’t know if I’ve ever used those #10 needles before – maybe on my first practice piece. Most of my knitting has been with size 0-3 needles. I knew I wanted a wide scarf, so I cast on 100 stitches.

(Ok you experienced knitters, stop laughing, the story gets better.)

My #10 needles have 9″ of working area. I knew I was jamming the stitches together on my needles, and I expected the stitches to expand a little bit. After all, I had just finished 64 stitch socks (on size 1 needles) with a similar yarn. I figured I’d have about 15-18″ of scarf – exactly what I wanted.

I started happily knitting away. Each row was taking a while, but that didn’t bother me. I got to four inches of length, then five. The free edge of the scarf was starting to ruffle like the bottom of open curtains. I expected that. After all, I was compressing the stitches very aggressively to get them all on the needles. Finally, I had six or eight inches of fabric and I was starting to get worried. At this point, I figured sure the free end would be relaxed enough to get a reasonable read on how wide the scarf was – and I wanted to make sure I didn’t need to start over with a few more stitches.

(Ok, ok. Stop laughing!)

I got my yarn needle and some waste yarn and pulled the scarf off the needles to allow it to relax, then I pulled more scarf off the needle. Then some more. The scarf started growing … and growing … and growing. I think it ended up being 32″ wide. It was almost a neck wrap. In fact, I considered binding off to create a neck wrap. Instead, I ripped back and started over. I think I had almost two feet of the final width scarf knit before I pulled more yarn out of the ball.

Mom, enjoy your scarf. It was almost a blanket.