When I went to Strand in New York city, I picked up a book full of crochet patterns. Over the summer of 2014, I asked my mother to pick a pattern she liked and for her friend to pick a pattern she liked so that I could make the both scarves. I started on my mother's then, got about six inches into it, and just didn't pick it up again. It wasn't a hard pattern, but it was a time-consuming one, and it wasn't great for my wrist.
I didn't touch them again until August of 2015, when I brought the yarn back with me. My mother's is still sitting on my dresser, but when I couldn't figure out a holiday gift for my mother's friend that year, I decided it was finally time to crank out her scarf. I started it around Thanksgiving and had two false starts before I really got going, but again, it got pushed aside and pushed aside.
I finally picked it back up on my 6 hour flight home for the holidays and got about half of it done. I did not finish it in time to give it to her (and was really lame about giving her the false start as a teaser). I finished all but the final touches, of course, on the plane back across the country. It took me another two weeks to finally put the finishing touches on it, which my mother later helped me decided were misguided. She took it back home with her to give to her friend after a visit in February, promising to cut off my misguided decorations before doing so.
Anyway, this scarf was done with sparkly teal yarn and a bowtie pattern. It's simple single crochet the whole way through, but most doesn't build off the previous row, instead leaving chains that get gathered to form a window with a bowtie in it. I added thick black, teal, and orange tassels to seal the deal.
The original iteration used black yarn on the bowtie gathering portion, but that just looked like margarita glasses. My solution was to tie black thread around the "knot" of the bowties, but that just looked awful, and my mother promised to remove them with a seam ripper before gifting the scarf (I tied one on each side of the bottom five bowties, double-knotted, so there was no way I was getting them off any other way).
Bottom line, I got my first monthly project of 2016 done.
Pictures to come!
