CaaaAAAaaashmere...

For UFO number three, I would like to introduce you to the Backyard Leaves Scarf designed by Annie Modessitt and featured in several publications by Interweave Press, including Scarf Style and the 2006 Holiday issue of Interweave Knits. The latter is where I first noticed it and fell in love. I'd been wanting to learn to work lace from a graph, and the design just called to me from the pages. And, if ever there was a scarf pattern made for cashmere, a fiber I'd been dying to work with, this was the one. Surely, it would be mine.

The tragic twist to our little love story is that by the time I saw the magazine in late October, I had already made the decision that my epic yarn stash needed some major culling and was trying to avoid adding yarn to it. And, of course, Christmas was fast approaching and I didn't want to spend money on some yummy yarn to make a dream scarf for myself when there were so many other gifts to be bought. I bought the magazine to get the pattern, but I was fully prepared to wait a year or two to start it, so that I could both get the stash under control and hope to be in a position where buying enough cashmere to make it wouldn't be such a financial stretch.

Well, that pattern burned a hole in my soul for weeks. I would take the magazine out and check the photo to make sure that, yes, it really was my dream scarf, and yes, it really was there waiting to be made. I knew that with all the Christmas knitting I had to get done there was no way that I could even think about casting on until the new year, even if I did have the yarn. But one night when I was bored and too wired to sleep, I did what all sleep deprived and cashmere-starved knitters do. I went trolling through eBay.

And, that night, my friends, the eBay gods were smiling. For yea, verily, there was someone in New York City who apparently had a stash of cashmenre that they didn't want (shocking, I know) and had posted it in 5 different lots, sorted by color. One of the colors was a beautiful dark forest green. And this wasn't just any cashmere. No, this was Filatura di Crosa. Normally retailing for $50 a skein. The lot of 4 skeins was still under $10. Ten. Dollars. Granted, there were still a few days to go, so I put in a bid and kept checking in. I was always the high bidder, and I hadn't even cracked $20 yet. The last few minutes before the auction closed, I parked myself at the computer and watched as people bid the price up a dollar or two at a time. There were 3 people fighting over it. In the last few seconds, I entered a hail-mary bid at the highest amount I could justify paying and won. With the shipping, $45.

FORTY-FIVE! Less than the cost of one skein got me 4! Unfortunately, the person only took checks, so it took nearly a month for the yarn to arrive, but ooooooOOOooh, when it did... And, yes, I still have too much yarn and, yes, Christmas was coming fast, but when was I ever going to get such perfect yarn for such an amazingly low price, I ask you? It was still a few weeks before I could cast on, because I was in the last few days of Christmas knitting when it arrived, but when I did finally cast on? Oh, man. Cashmere. I'd knit sheets out of it if I could.



It took 2 tries to get used to working the lace from a graph, but I'm doing well now. As you can see, though, I'm not too terribly far along. I have to pay very close attention to what I'm doing, and so it's not conducive to working on while the kids are awake. On this third time casting on, I'm only one and a half times through the repeat. I certainly don't expect to have this project done by the end of the the UFO knitathon, but I do hope that by finishing off a lot of my simpler UFOs, I'll be more inclined to pick this one up in the evening instead of working on something I don't love as much because I'm closer to finishing it.