A scarf and a shawl (or a sharf gone wrong)

When my mom came for a visit in October, she brought yarn and knitting needles for me to teach her how to knit. She'd learned to crochet somewhere along the way but never to knit.

Two slight problems with this plan: 1) She got sick. :-( She was able to hang with the kids and do a few fun things with us, but we didn't have nearly as much down time/visiting time as we normally do. And knitting was the least part of that that we missed. 2) She brought this really fun fuzzy yarn in two different colors. Those who know fun fuzzy yarn and have ever learned to knit know that it's not at all good for learning on. No big deal, because I had plenty of other yarn for her to learn with, but there was no way she was starting, much less completing, those projects (she wanted scarfs) while she was here.

So, I took up the projects for her.

I worked the blue yarn first (I'd link you to the type, but I kind of didn't pay attention to that, so I don't remember), intending to make her a sharf. This is a concept I'd stumbled on accidentally when I was first knitting what was supposed to be a scarf for a friend. It ended up too wide, but made the perfect convertible scarf/shawl. So I repeated that concept several times, including one which I gave my mom while she was here. And I thought I'd repeat it again with this yarn.

I still have a bit of a problem gauging how wide something's going to be, though, by my row of casting on, so it, too, ended up too wide. So I made a shawl. But I ran out of yarn, so I used some leftover from my nephew's blanket to finish out the ends.


I can't decide whether it's stylish-funky or just funky.

I was able to send packages back with a friend's parents to be mailed, and my mom got these yesterday (this was the last of the projects I'd been waiting to post until the items had been received). I assured her that, if she wants, we can buy more of the original yarn and I'll remove the ends and just knit more of the fun, fuzzy yarn. I haven't heard back yet as to her response to my offer. :-P

So, with the brown yarn she bought, I decided to play it safer. Just a scarf, thank you.

Well, I did play with some patterns, but once I discovered that the yarn was too fuzzy for the patterns to show up, I took that part out and just knit. And it still turned out fun and fuzzy. With fringe, too!