Searching for inspiration

I promised my parents I'd make them each a scarf/shawl as a retirement present. I've finished my Mum's shawl so I thought I'd cast on for my Dad's. I was originally planning to make the Checkerboard scarf but the brioche stitch, the thin yarn and my inability to concentrate properly at the time meant I was finding it far more complicated than I could be bothered with and not looking how I wanted it to



It's gorgeous yarn (from Posh Yarn) and in my opinion it needs something simple and textural to show it off best. Ok, back to the drawing board, or rather back to the stitch pattern dictionary. How about a simple k5 p5 basket stitch?



Grr still not right. My tension is all over the place and it just looks messy and yuck. Plus I'm having doubts about the whole concept of knitting a 5ft scarf using 2.5mm needles and fingering weight yarn :-S

So I log onto the laptop, make a pot of tea and have a read through some blogs. I see Country Maison has just posted about a crocheted scarf. Now there's an idea... maybe lengthwise instead of doing the short horizontal rows. The natural texture of the crochet will look a bit like a ribbed one and show off the yarn nicely. Plus I can make sure it's the right length and then just keep working it until the right thickness or until the yarn runs out. Perfect!

A slight problem though. A certain flur baby has decided to take over my lap and, well, I'm pinned down!



He is beautiful though :-)



I think I'm going to get frogging and then start hooking. Once I've had my cup of tea and escaped from the cat of course ;-)