Step Away

I'm clearly not destined to have this scarf.  Do you see the problem?

How about now....

I don't know how I did this.  This is about how big it was the first time I made it, when I realized I wasn't going to have enough wool to finish it.  I ripped it back totally, paid very careful attention to the rate of increase, started the even section in the middle one repeat early, and only did one repeat even instead of two before starting to decrease.  By rights, I should have lots of yarn left over.   Words fail me.
**actually, in the interest of full disclosure, words did not fail me but I'm trying to keep this family friendly.

So I did the only thing I could do.  I very carefully folded it up and put it away with the pattern before I poked my eyes out with the needles, or strangled myself with the cable.

And wound this into a cake.

This is from SweetGeorgia Yarns and is the January 2013 Sock Club yarn called "At the Ballet".   It is 50% merino and 50% silk so I'm not going to make socks out of it.  I prefer my socks to have 15 - 20% nylon simply because I think they wear better in the heel and toe.

I'm going to make another single skein scarf (glutton for punishment, I know...).  The pattern here is called Storm Warning by Liz Corke and you can find it on Ravelry.

As you can see, I've knit some of it and I don't totally like the combination of the yarn and pattern.  Firstly, I'm not a huge fan of garter stitch and a whole pile of this scarf is going to end up as one big swath of garter stitch.  Secondly, I think there is too much going on.  The sawtooth edging, the cable and the garter stitch are all textural elements and with the combination of the strongly varigated yarn, the texture is being lost.   If I had a tonal yarn, I think this would be perfect - even with the garter stitch.   I have a few ideas about how to change this so I'll work it again to this point and see what I think.

So did anything work out well this morning?  Well, yes as a matter of fact, something did work out well.  I simply adore the beads in this and whatever I end up doing, the beads will be part of it.

Update

I spent a few hours playing around and I now have this.  A simple twisted column on the top, a stockinette panel in the middle and I kept the beaded sawtooth motif at the bottom.  This has potential.