The Classy People House: With scarves of red tied around their throats

Wow time flies. I can’t believe that the Ravelypics has been going on for 10 days. It seems like everyone else in my team (Team Redheart) is banging out projects left and right but not me. I am making progress every day but I think I should have started with a smaller project first. On Saturday I finished the back of my vest and started the front which I hope to have done by Sunday. That should give me time to finish it before the closing ceremonies. To distract you from my lack of knitting progress let’s talk about something I finished! Here she is my favorite winter scarf to date Saroyan.

I love the show Bones. It is my favorite of the fake science slash crime solving shows. I think I like it because I worked in a natural history museum and the fake Jeffersonian reminds me of that. Of course we didn’t have a hunky FBI agent or high tech forensic tools. I even belong to the Bones Group on Ravelry. In December I found out that you can get great patterns that Liz Abinante designed based on the characters on Bones. I fell in love with the Saroyan Shawl and decided that I would use the gifted Manos Clasica in Poppy that I got a few months ago. The pattern is named after the director of the lab, a strong, independent, intelligent woman how could you go wrong?

I had two skeins in a great tonal cherry red color so I decided that I would make do with that alone. The pattern is very well written, free and lovely and is easily modified to fit the yardage you have. It forms a curved almost like a parenthesis shape with a garter stitch border on one edge and leaf edge on the other side. It is knit in one piece including the borders. I knit one skein and then started my decreases ending with a full 18 leaves.

The yarn is hand spun and dyed. It has thick and thin areas and light tonal changes in the dyeing. It is quite lovely and washed up soft. Some of the thin areas made me nervous the yarn goes from worsted to DK in a few inches. I was worried about the integrity of the knitting but only time will tell how it will last. I didn’t hate this yarn but since it is out of my price range I won’t pine for it. I do love the color and it looks wonderful peeking out of my black pea coat on a cold winter morning. It reminds me of the Fleet Foxes song White Winter Hymnal which mentions a red scarf. I ended up with a tiny ball of yarn left over which I saved for some purpose in the future.

What else is popping? I finished I, Claudius by Robert Graves which I loved. It is a Roman soap opera, juicy and exciting. I also finished The Old Wives Tale by Arnold Bennett. It is the story of two sisters in England in the late 1800’s one stays home and runs the family business the other runs away to Paris very entertaining. I started To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf and Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad.

We are all finished the college applications and the financial aid forms now we wait! I don’t mind the wait since it makes it seem like things aren’t going to change fast and furious over the next few months. I did decide that I want to make him a buffalo plaid throw for his dorm room when we find out what school he will end up at. I found a Better Homes and Gardens Afghan Book from the 80’s at the thrift shop with a cool pattern in it. Plaid is so popular with suburban fops and dudes!

Up next I decide to make some Alpaca kids socks. Yeah it sounds like such a good idea.