FO – Brioche Scarf

For today’s „Finished Object“- friday I present you a scarf with a long story.

A couple of years ago I borrowed a brown scarf from my boyfriend to accomplish my outfit. It happen what should happen. I lost the scarf. Oh my goodness! But I’ve never told the truth to my boyfriend. So after years he still thinks it must be somewhere. Because he had so far only two scarfs: a brown and a stripey one. With guilty feelings I thought, when I knit him a brown scarf he will forgive me.

So, I looked for a classic scarf he could wear with his suits. I came up with the idea to start Henry by Mareike Sattler. This scarf is very classic and it doesn’t look like hand-knitted. „Perfect“, I thought. Despite many comments about the amount of time I started the pattern in December 2011. I thought I’m done until March, when he has his birthday.

The scarf is worked lengthwise. To keep me motivated I started on Ravelry a KAL (knitalong). But this didn’t stopped me to be bored. Though the pattern is very nice, it’s slow going. You can hardly see a progress, though I’ve knitted a few rows. On the picture above you see my progress after 24 rows. Bored, I’ve thrown the project in a corner and waited until it is done by itself. I thought, some time I would find again the motivation for it. Thought wrong. Towards the end of 2013 I saw a classic scarf in a blog entry from Purl Bee. I immediately knew what to do.

I unraveled the Henry scarf after 60 rows, washed the yarn to relax and started with the new scarf. I expected to be finished by christmas. Failure! No, that didn’t happen. As the pattern name says, it’s knitted in the brioche stitch. That means you slip the half of the stitches every row. Or in other words: 100 rows are around 15cm.

Pattern: Brioche Scarf by Purl Soho (free pattern)
Needle size: 3mm
Yarn: Malabrigo Sock, colour „cordovan“
Finished measurements: 26 x 180cm

I knitted my fingers off with this project. Even my knitting friends asked me all the time what I was doing there. On the one hand it does not correspond with my colour scheme – on the other hand, the pattern is not really exciting. Well, I repented to knit this scarf. What a relief when I finished it!

As my boyfriend and I live together, it was tricky to block the scarf. I can finally not spoil the surprise or send him for a few days in the hotel. So I washed on one of my days off the scarf and blocked it. But where to put it? So I came up with the idea to hide it all behind the shelf. Actually, the work of my friend is to vacuum the apartment, but this weekend I’ve taken over the work. Can you see it? Unbelievable what you do for a surprise!

I finished the project one week before and gave him the present on his birthday. He was surprised and had no clue about it. He’s happy with it. He strokes the scarf all the time and is impressed by the softness of the wool. At least, there’s a happy end….