A scarf for a scarf

Last year for my birthday I got a whole bunch of yarn from one friend. There were five balls of beige-y grey-y linen/cotton/hemp that I turned into the checkerboard scarf I already wrote about, for the friend in question, but there were a few single balls, including one of a gorgeously soft pale green yarn. It was a pleasure to knit, and I turned it into a small lacy scarf, with the idea in mind of giving it to T-leader, one of the older women who had long been in charge of the Brownie troop I'm with, but who had retired last year. Having finished the scarf, however, I convinced myself it wasn't big enough, and so I shoved it into the back of my knitting shelf because I couldn't track down any of the same yarn (but I did stumble upon some other gorgeous yarn by the same company and somehow ended up ordering it in two different colours, in rather big batches for larger projects... hmmm, wonder how that happened!).

I eventually found a similar-ish soft yarn in a beige/brown colour that I thought would be complementary, and dragged out the lacy green scarf to steel myself for the mamoth job of picking up all the stitches. But before I did I decided I should try to block it... rather aggressively... and so I wet it thoroughly and stretched it rather vigorously before pinning it out on an extra futon. The next day I un-pinned it and after trying it on decided that it was perfectly acceptable as a small scarf (of course this had nothing to do with my avid dislike of picking up stitches... nothing at all!)





And, to make a short story long, as my father often teases me, on to the title of the post...

I took the green scarf to Brownies last week, in the hopes of giving it to T-leader's daughter, who is a leader in the troop as well, working with the junior and senior high school-age girls. I was somewhat disappointed to find out she wasn't feeling well and so wouldn't be there, and figured I'd have to take the scarf home and wait for our next meeting. Fate decided to help me out, however, as T-leader herself showed up suddenly about a half an hour after we started practicing for our fly-up and investiture ceremony. I grabbed the wrapped scarf, angling in to try and talk to her, but she had been immediately surrounded by other leaders happy to see her.

I started to hand her the scarf, just as she handed me a parcel about the same size... a hand-made scarf! We both started laughing when we realized what was happening.

She's a weaver, and had long been promising to make all the Brownie leaders cashmere scarves when she bought a huge batch of un-dyed cashmere a few years ago. She had bought a few huge cones of plain cashmere yarn for weaving and then dyed it herself in small batches. The first scarf she made was a deep pink with squares of magenta, for herself, then a brown scarf with herringbone ribs for one of the other leaders, but two of us were still scarf-less. Until last weekend when I was presented with this gorgeous scarf in shades of blue (some that match my Girl Scout uniform perfectly). It is soft and warm and absolutely lovely.