The Little Yarn That Could

Some months ago, Gretchen was looking for donations for an American Heart Association Walk. She generously offered a "prize" for the donations, each dollar would be one entry into a drawing for some yarn of choice, either dishcloth cotton or alpaca. For a good cause, I thought, and of course made a donation. I never expected to win, that's not why entered. I like to do my little part for charities. I pretty much forgot about it. In fact, when I got the email I almost dismissed it as I didn't recognize the sender. But I opened it, and much to my surprise I won! I chose the alpaca, as I already had plenty of cotton. Gretchen sent it out quickly, and also included some handmade soap as I'd asked about them when I saw a link on her site. I received 6 hanks of so very soft pink variegated Atacama 100% alpaca yarn by Araucania Yarns. The yarn smelled lovely. :-) I knew not what the yarn would 'grow up to be' as Gretchen said, and I told her someday it would let me know. Well, that day came, and I have been working on this on and off since October. I wanted to finish it Christmas week. I knew it wanted to be a scarf, and a felted scarf at that. So, I knitted. And knitted...and knitted. On #8 needles. All garter stitch. It was so soft and nice to knit with, but quite tedious. Good TV knitting though. I put it down a number of times to work on other projects. I was determined to have few, if no, UFOs going into 2007, so I knitted. ALL of the hanks. I didn't want the scarf to be too short after felting, and when I finished #4, I should have cut the fringe on #5, then finished #5. But nooo...what would I do with one lonely hank? So...I cut the fringe and finished knitting #6. And then felted. Well, they say felting is not an exact science. That is true. The width, perfect. The length, I sure didn't have to worry about it being to short! It is way too long, but really good if we ever get 20 degrees with windchills at 0! I do love the way it felted, especially the fringe, it's like dredlocks!