Knitting for Mom

Last December, my mom travelled with me to North Carolina to drop afghans off to the Victory Junction Camp, which is a charity drive I organise every year through Ravelry. While we down there, I let my mom browse through some knitting books and magazines I had brought to see if anything caught her eye. She chose the Gossamer Stars Scarf by Kat Coyle.

The next day (actually, for the next two days), Cristi took Mom and I on a yarn/fabric/food crawl (hint: if you ever need a Charlotte yarn crawl, this is the woman to consult!). I found the yarn I wanted to use for Mom's scarf: Southwest Trading Company's Bamboo, purchased at Yarnhouse. Going by the yardage stated in the pattern, copiously doing the maths (since this particular LYS isn't local to ME and I had one shot at getting the knitting maths right), I purchased three skeins. As it turned out, I only needed two. Score!

This scarf is worked from the middle out - start with a provisional cast-on, work to one end, pick up the live stitches and then work to the other end. It's charted - yay, and is pretty simple. There was one stitch that I had to consult The Woman Who Knows Everything (aka: Brook) about because when I did it, it wasn't looking AT ALL like the pictures. But she fiddled with it and reported back that it wouldn't until I purled back on the next row. So I soldiered on. That, plus the knowledge that I had forgotten how to count to six solved much.

Mom and I agreed that this would be her combination birthday/Mother's Day gift (her birthday is 02 April), which worked out nicely since I'd be seeing her again in Charlotte late-May for the NASCAR All-Star race and Coca-Cola 600. My intent was to cast on the scarf during the Opening Ceremonies of the winter Olympics and use the scarf as my Knitting Olympics (as hosted by the Yarn Harlot) challenge. However, that was the time period during which Oscar was so sick, so that didn't work out very well.

However, the scarf did get done. And Mom was pretty pleased with it: