In which we will collectively ignore the fact that I am inexcusably truant in my blogging obligations as I blithely blog along as if nothing were amiss.

For me A has always been for Anne. Years ago when I was a young school girl I read the book, "Cheaper by the Dozen" by Frank B. Gilbreth, Jr and Earnestine Gilbreth Carey. The book is a memoir of their life, recounting tales of growing up in a family of twelve children with a father, and then later their mother who worked as efficiency engineers.
I was charmed by the story* and became enchanted with the idea of having a large family and decide that I wanted my first child to be girl and to name her Anne, as was the oldest child in the book. My "plan" remained so until after I had my first two children, both of which were boys and both of which I referred to as Anne while I was pregnant up until the moment they popped out and were revealed not to be good candidates for the name.
After the first two children arrived, we thought it prudent to scale back the "plan" for a large family and on the third pregnancy decided to opt out for a moderate family of three**
I still held out hope for a daughter to name Anne, and in the wee hours of a cold January morning, my wish was granted and we were blessed with the daughter, whom was the first child we had had that we had no trouble agreeing upon a name. We couldn't have been happier.
That's all well and good you may be thinking, but how does this relate to a knitting/fiber arts, ABC Along?
Well, let me tell you, how about this.

Remember this skein of "Anne" from Schaefer yarn Company?
A little over a year ago I regaled my knitting woes to all regarding a Pooling Colors Scarf that I was trying to knit for a birthday gift for my daughter Anne, and it has occured to me that although I have listed the scarf in my projects on Ravelry that I haven't shown you the finished scarf here on the blog, most unfair of me, I know.


So with out further ado, I present to you my version of the Pooling Colors Scarf

As I stated in my earlier blog entry, I had difficulty working the stitch pattern as was written, so I played around with a few different stitch patterns and settled on this stitch pattern as follows: Row 1 - K1 *yo,K3, K3tog, K3, yo, K1* repeat between *'s to end.
Row - 2 Knit
This pattern will produce a zig zag pattern if you knit the scarf in stripes but as you can see it doesn't zig or zag much unless you alternate colors. None the less, I liked the laciness of the scarf and decided to use it anyway.







There may not be horizontal stripes but none-the-less there be stripes. If you knit this scarf just so the colors will pool in long vertical stripes, or as I like to say knitting a vertical striped scarf the hard way. However I found the process intriguing and interesting and I was in the end quite pleased with the results.



As was Hobbes, (though he isn't very discriminating, he will sit on any wool I put down to photograph)

and also quite pleased was the intended recipient....

Ani

(How about that Anne? Two whole scarfs in one year, I'm on a roll, yay me!)

* I was less charmed by the recent movies, loosely based on the book.

**My husband scheduled and had a vasectomy after the birth of our third child and yes, we have four children, sometimes life takes an unexpected turn, but that's a story for another time. (perhaps when we get to the letter K.)