I can't resist the lure of the queue....

On Ravelry (for those who don't use it), there's a lovely little feature called "queue." What it is, is a place where you can "line up" the patterns you want to knit, designate yarns for them, order them based in the order you THINK you are going to start them (though I have had the Cobblestone Pullover at #1 since I first got on Ravelry).

I love having that queue. To me, it represents potential and possibilities and a sort of a promise to myself that someday, I will knit up all the things I want to make. And I can also scan it - mine has been in place for not quite a year - and I can sort of remember what I was thinking and feeling at the time I queued a certain pattern. (I also remember where I bought most of my yarns and books. And I have vivid memories attached to other things I own. You'd think that would be exhausting but it really isn't).

I was looking at it again early this morning. And I couldn't resist pulling something off the queue and starting it - even though I have many projects going, even though I'm still contemplating that ribbed pullover (and a 3 x 1 or even 4 x 1 rib might be best - thanks, Lydia).

And I got to thinking about how this is Labor Day weekend, and even though it sure doesn't feel like it here, culturally speaking, this is the end of summer. And I wanted to do something to celebrate the end of summer. (If you lived in as hot and humid a climate as I do, you'd be celebrating it, too.)

So I cast on for a scarf.



This is the My So-Called Scarf that apparently everyone on Ravelry either has made, or has in their queue. I'm using the recommended yarn (Manos! The yarn of Fate!*) in color 100, sometimes called "Agate."

(*no, that is not my original joke, unfortunately)

The yarn is one that I got from Ewe Knit (which should be gearing up for a grand re-opening next week, yay!). This was the yarn I asked my mom to go and get for me last fall - I had had a bad week (I don't remember why now and don't feel like searching my archives to remind myself of why now). She asked what color and I told her to surprise me, that she knew the colors I liked.

And she does.

Because I already had a skein of this very color, purchased at another time (perhaps even from a different store) that I had bought for fingerless mitts I never started.

So that makes me laugh. But the yarn really is a lovely color combination- deep, purplish pinks, warm orangey browns, dark purples...I guess Agate is a good name for it.

The pattern is not hard to knit at all - I was afraid, because it's a sort of twisted-stitch herringbone that it would be very tight and hard on the hands (like the herringbone pattern on the crown of the Lady Detective Hat). But it isn't that way at all, it's quite simple. You do need to pay a BIT of attention, because the odd-numbered rows, especially, involve doing something counter-intuitive (reknitting a stitch that is about to be "passed over" and dropped) and I messed it up in row 3 and decided it was easier to just rip the whole thing out and start over than to try to un-knit.

I like making scarves; they make me think of fall and brisk cool winds and all the good things that come with fall.