When in doubt, read the instructions

Winter is my favourite season by far. The more clothes I'm wearing, the happier I am. Boots, socks, coats, gloves, scarves – especially scarves. I like my clothes to fly well under the radar; I'm not confident with colour or the way I look, so I wear mostly black, but in winter I like to spice it up with a burst of colour in the form of a scarf.

With the weather cooling down here now, I want more scarves, so I've dropped the unfinished projects and the things I've been making for for other people. Right now it's me, me, me, sweetie.

The latest project is a lace scarf in lovely Malabrigo yarn that I bought last winter, in the appropriately named shade of Hollyhock.

It's a thickish (maybe 10-ply/Aran or so) single-ply wool yarn with
a lovely felt-like feel to it. I'm knitting it on 6mm needles.

 I started it on Easter Thursday in preparation for a weekend away. Being impatient, I didn't test out the pattern first, even though it was a new one, and much more complicated than any I'd tried before.

This, predictably, backfired on me. After two days of pretty solid knitting I had about 30 centimetres done. It wasn't right, though. The repeats kept going wonky and I couldn't work out why – until I realised I'd simply skipped part of the pattern. As my father used to say: 'When in doubt, read the instructions'.

'Do you think it's worth it?' my mother said, as she watched me rip back all but the first six rows and start again. And later: 'I think I'd give up if I were you.'

I didn't, though. I finished one end and am now doing the other separately, so they'll be symmetrical. I'll do stocking stitch or rib for the central section – I need to have a play and see what looks best – then graft them together. I don't think I'll block the whole thing as I really like the honeycomb effect, but I will block the very ends just so they don't curl up.

The pattern is a 16-row repeat called Leaf Lace and the idea for the scarf came from one
that took my eye on the highly distracting Purlbee site, which is full of lovely projects.

'How many scarves do you need?' a friend once asked me. I think her reasoning was that you've only got one neck, so you only need one scarf – but if I followed that kind of logic I'd only have one pair of undies. I think that with scarves, as with undies, more is more. Every couple of years I have a cull, and give to charity the scarves that have gone out of favour. I like knitting scarves as they are an achievable project for the easily bored and distracted (like me), you can generally do them in front of the telly or on the bus, and they give you a chance to try new patterns and new yarns without having to shell out masses of money.

And they make great presents, when I can stop thinking about myself.