is that from banana republic?

so a few months back i went on a road trip to upstate new york. for those of you not from manhattan, urban new york is colloquially defined as "anywhere outside of manhattan that is not long island. and a few parts of the bronx." when embarking upon this trip i arrived with an overflowing coffee in hand, bright eyed and lightly packed, ready to face the hourlong trip ahead. then i heard it was five hours. oh. do i have to drive?

so the beginning of the trip was spent detangling a mass of yarn and balling it. this bit always irks me as it seems rather redundant if you're going to be knitting it into something else eventually anyway. this is probably why i wind up spending so much of my time unknotting things. but this is neither here nor there.

after unhappily detangling and happily knitting a basket weave scarf, i ran out of yarn. i nearly cried. what am i going to do? must. keep. moving. i managed a good day without knitting. or, rather, a day without knitting. then i got to hit up a small town yarn shoppe. with the "pe". there was a class outside with women hand dying their own yarns. i was thrilled. i sauntered in and perused their wares. after a bit the woman behind the counter asked the older woman with whom i was shopping if she could help her. "oh no, i don't knit. he's the one who wanted to come here and get yarn." after my blush settled i was guided to a corner with some lovely peruvian wool in charcoal grey and mint green. after picking up two of the former and one of the latter, the below scarf was made.





size 7 needles, 2x2 rib pattern with 1 extra stitch on each side which was sliped to make the edges look neat at the beginning of the row. 6 rows MC, 2 rows CC, 2 rows MC, repeat until you run out of yarn. very simple, it just required some patience. what allowed me to make such small striped was carrying the yarn up the side when switching colors instead of cutting and working in the ends. that would have been disasterous and possibly ended my knitting career prematurely. on the 2 row bits i just brought the new color around to the front. on the 6 row stretches, i brought the main color around behind the green, kind of trapping it between the first two stitches. it turned out about 6' long, and i'm pleased as punch.

DIFFICULTY:
AWESOMENESS:

**note: a girl in a bar actually asked me the title question on friday. i promptly wet myself and then said thank you no, i made it. idle chitchat ensued. **