I tried. Really, I tried hard.

Have you heard of the chippie (crisp to you Brits) scarf? WKM has a picture posted here and I was so entranced by her fabulous work that I thought I would give it a go.

My plan was to make it for a friend's birthday (beg. Feb since you ask) and even splashed out on some NORO in a colourway I thought may suit her. This in itself makes me saintly as I have never really got the appeal of Noro.

WMK very kindly supplied me with the pattern and I set about casting on. The trick with the chippie scarf is that although this first stage may take several years and wear out either your fingers or your needles the actual knitting is only nine rows worth.

This being Britain I first had to juggle the needle size conversion then realised that I couldn't be ar*ed to actually go buy the right ones and so began by using 9mm rather than 10mm figuring this wouldn't make much difference. I'm sure it didn't.

What may well have been an issue in my increasing concern with this project was this obsession the Americans have about knitting with sticks. Or not. Nearly every recipe I see from the U.S. is knit in the round , either dpns or circular needles. I only possess one set of ea. of these and even together they wouldn't come close to 10mm so I started with straights.

No seriously. And I was okay for the first few rows. But then when the increases meant there was over 300 stitches on the stick things began to get a little tricky.

I sent out a distress call and WMK came dashing to my rescue with not just one but TWO circular needles. Figuring this was a bit excessive I carefully put one set away and kept on going. A few more rows of increasing and I was up to over 600 stitches!! AND they were stretched over BOTH sets of WMK's needles.




By the time I got to the end of the eighth row my fingers were starting to cry real tears and the wool was never going to last through to casting off so I let it sit in one of the increasing number of knitting bags to fester develop for a little while.

But last weekend I had had enough. This chippie scarf, much as I loved it, was going nowhere. So I dedicated Saturday night in front of the telly to restructuring my scarf-in-progress.

This is the result.

But I am hoping I have a new home for waiting for it.