Who's a Spoiled Hubby?

Back around Christmas time Hubby was putting on his scarf in preparation for leaving the house and said something along the lines of, "I want the next scarf you make me to only come to my waist. And I want it to be thicker and wider."

His current scarf is from a DK weight yarn and is about 6 inches wide by 91 inches long.

"I made that scarf for you in 2007," I blurted out. A fact I knew because I'd been digging in the blog archives or my Ravelry notebook.

Our eyes locked for a moment as the import of what I'd just said sunk in.

Then, in his best pompous voice, Hubby said, "At your earliest convenience then." Because, of course, now his current scarf is old and stale.

I would like to point out he has continued to wear it happily every day since this conversation.

Award Winning
This is an award winning scarf he is rejecting. For the December issue of his school's student newspaper they did a top ten best present list and his scarf was voted #1. I clipped this image of the online version for proof.

Regardless, since I love my Hubby I set to work. We had the week between Christmas and New Year's off together, so I dragged him into Knitting Central to try to narrow down color choices at least.

I was thinking a bulky or at least worsted weight yarn would be the way to go. One difficulty with these projects is Hubby doesn't "speak yarn" and tends to know what he likes when he sees it, but not how to get there.

He didn't like any of the colors of the bulky yarn we had in stock and settled on Debbie Bliss Donegal Luxury Tweed Aran in a dark blue and dark green. I figured I'd do stripes.

But after having the evening to see it and pet it he decided it was too thin.

Combination One and Two
To give him a base to work from when trying to articulate his desire I got out some of the Zara left over from his striped sweater.

At that time I was working up a pattern using the XO cable. So I knit a swatch with Zara single, then I knit a swatch with two different Zara colors.

He liked the thickness of the one held double and was intrigued by the color variation. All along he'd been saying he wanted something tweed or with lots of colors.

So I took the Debbie Bliss yarn back and bought some Artyarns Supermerino in a semi-solid green and a white with flashes of different colors. It's a worsted weight yarn and I figured holding it together would get the chunkiness he wanted.

I also settled on the Lamar scarf pattern by Gale Zucker rather than attempting to design my own.

I knit a swatch. He liked the thickness. He wanted it wider. He was wishy-washy on the color and questioned whether it would go with his blazers.

I returned the green and got an orange instead. It was a bright orange rather than the rust orange I remembered. Someone kindly compared my swatch to a dog throwing up a box of crayons.

Hubby nixed the colors right away. But I finally had a base to work from when he said, "I want more professional colors."


That Settles It
I returned the Supermerino and went back to the Donegal Luxury Tweed Aran.

This time I held it doubled, which didn't make it quite a thick as the Supermerino held doubled, but was thicker than it held single.

Finally, all the pieces fell into place. Hubby approved and I was off and running.

Aside from the fact that I had to keep restarting because I was making stupid knitting mistakes.

I cast on 48 stitches instead of the 36 the pattern instructs since he wanted his wider.

I had worked about what you see in the picture and handed it too him for approval. Despite watching me knit for all these years, he apparently still doesn't understand the mechanics. He didn't realize which direction it was growing, despite the needle dangling from it, and said he wanted it wider.

My little head almost exploded. I was like, "It's 9 inches wide!!" Which is when he confessed he was holding it the wrong direction (I was messing with something else so hadn't been watching him). Once I got him straightened out he liked it.

Only problem now is I've temporarily abandoned the scarf to test knit a sock pattern for P. Last night Hubby found his scarf on top of the dining room credenza and was playing with it.

That is a bad sign. That is phase one of his campaign to make his project a priority.

First he is all cute parading the unfinished item around and mooning over it. Then he slowly escalates into pouting. Finally, other projects and yarn are taken hostage.

Oh, yes, I've seen this behavior before. Things could get ugly.