Scarf for Grandpa

[afuna]

Oh man, my mom wants me to knit a scarf for my grandpa and she's so enthusiastic about it, that she bought me four balls of cashmere (two dark brown, two light tan) to knit into a scarf for him.

I'm somewhat overwhelmed. It's like she's become the soccer mom of knitting! She's taking the scarf I knit (need to take a picture) and showing it around the family table and she keeps boasting about the fact that I'm knitting and I basically sit on the sidelines and try to act dignified and not like I'm laughing my ass off.

I think it's hilarious that she's going to such lengths to promote me in my knitting. But I draw the line on her trying to help me pick out a pattern she wants me to knit for grandpa, or at her trying to get me to get my grandpa to pick the pattern I want to knit for him -- shooed her away from that idea as firmly but politely as I can; I want some bits of this to be a surprise. In fact, most of it will be, since my grandpa thought I was using some local gold-flecked red (SO VERY CHINESE) fuzzy novelty cotton-blend yarn which my mom made me show him, but this was before she handed me four balls of cashmere.

(No, seriously. Yes, SERIOUSLY!)

I'm nervous about knitting this stuff, though. It feels so much more expensive than what I usually knit, and I'm terrified of messing it up. But I found a nice masculine pattern: http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/seamans-scarf, with the only negative being that I don't think I can make it look nice as two-toned.... unless the cabled portions are a darker shade, and the neck portion is lighter? Trying to decide if that's a good idea.

I'm nervous enough about working with new material (cashmere) + working with new technique (cabling), that I think I'll need to drop by the local yarn store for a consult, and probably cable needles. I have tried cabling with some acrylic yarn; the no-cable-needle method was awkward; the with-dpn-substituting-for-cable-needle-method was slightly less awkward, but still a lot unwieldly and possibly dangerous.

Anyway, back to my mom and her reaction to my knitting. Maybe I should teach her to knit, and then she won't have to hang onto my knitting, ahaha. Oh no. Oh yes. Oh... maybe. Hmm.


ETA: aveleh suggests that with wool that nice, I could get away with a simple striped scarf in either 1x1 or 2x2 ribbing (I have not knit any full projects with ribbing, though I am familiar with the technique, so I am just not sure whether I'd prefer the effect of 1x1 or of 2x2.)

Then with this random stripe generator, I can come up with random stripes easily. Colors not entirely accurate, but good enough.

Comments

[afuna]

Oooh I like that one. I shall probably take that with a different project, because I've been convinced that for this yarn, the simpler, the better. But with that one, is each column done by ribbing, or is that just to illustrate where the cables line up?

[zarhooie]

The no \\ rows would be knit/purl edging (of the variety to prevent rolling), then knit 2, purl 2, knit 2, purl 2, knit 2, purl 2, knit 2, knit/purl edging. Each || row represents 3-7 rows of actual knitting. You could even do longer intervals if you wanted. the \\s are where you do a cable crossover.

Does that make sense?

[zarhooie]

And while I somewhat agree with D on how you should let a lux yarn shine through simplicity, I do *not* think that this pattern would take away from the yarn. However, that is just my opinion.

[afuna]

Very belatedly (because I wanted to study the pattern first and put it up as a project in ravelry, and I kept putting it off) -- but yes! That does make sense, and I'm already gleefully considering which of my stash I shall be trying it with!