The scarf from Hell

This scarf is pretty much a textbook of beginner's mistakes:

- I forgot to count the number of rows I did of the Fun Fur at the beginning, so I had to guess at how long to make the other end ... and I guessed wrong. (Why didn't I count them? Have you ever freakin' tried to count rows of freakin' Fun Fur?) I'm hoping that once I fluff it out, the problem will be less obvious.

- I used needles that were too big for the Lion Brand Suede that I used for the main body of the scarf, so it's much looser than I wanted it to be. Remember, kids, if the yarn says to use a 9 and you use an 11, this is what you'll end up with.

- I dropped a stitch (actually, I was CONSTANTLY dropping stitches, though I caught most of them) in the second part of the Fun Fur and only discovered it after I had cast off. I faked it up and tied it off to some neighboring stitches, so hopefully it won't come loose.

- I somehow kept adding stitches by mistake when I was using the Fun Fur because it was so hard to see what was the yarn (the tiny thread part) and what was just a big clump of fur. And this is supposed to be easy to use for beginners? Yeah, right.

The keyhole turned out pretty much okay. I'll probably need to reinforce it. Still, this whole stupid scarf was the project from Hell, but I was just too stubborn to frog it and start over.

What to make next ...

Hmm. I finally got to the point where I can make the keyhole part of my ribbed keyhole scarf, so I'm almost done with that. The cell phone case is going to take a little while longer, but I feel like I've made pretty good progress with that.

But I'm going to my knitting class tonight and I can't really work on my keyhole scarf there because it's an outside project. So the question becomes ... what to make next? The ABC Hat? The Connemara Scarf for my husband?

Decisions, decisions. I guess it'll depend on what yarn I like at the store tonight.

UPDATE: It turned out they didn't have the Debbie Bliss yarn I wanted for G's scarf, so it was the ABC hat after all.

The Jester Scarf

IMG_1679.JPG, originally uploaded by Mnemosyne_LA.

I'm not sure why I'm calling this my Jester Scarf -- I think it's the colors. I took some knitting lessons at Sit n Stitch, a needlework store near me, and the instructor came up with this simple pattern that has a really cool raised effect in the middle.

It's basically:

Cast on 30 stitches
Knit (garter stitch) 6 rows
7th (and all other odd rows): K5, P20, K5
8th (and all other even rows): K30
Continue until you get the length that you want, changing colors as you please. (Yes, the stripes are uneven on purpose.)
When you get about an inch from the end, knit (garter stitch) the last 6 rows. Cast off, block, and fringe as you please.

I used Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Superchunky, which turned out to be $16 per skein. Yes, I am apparently a yarn whore. I didn't think to save the labels, so I'm not sure exactly what colors they are. The flash blew them out a little: the purple and red are a little darker in person, and the green is a little softer.

Overall, a good first effort, IMHO!