Moonlight scarf

 

One summer night, when I was young, a boy came to my door and asked me to go for a walk with him, and we walked for miles and miles together down the moonlit country roads, holding hands and falling in love along the way.  For some reason, I thought of that night as I made this scarf, and how I wore a gauzy white dress that glowed in the dark, and how as the night got chilly, his hand in mine was so warm.

This little scarf makes me think, too, of outdoor concerts in August.   I want to kick off my sandals and lie on a quilt in the warm darkness, looking at the stars and listening to Judy Collins play her guitar.  (I did this once.  It was holy.) 

The pattern is my own, devised as an experiment.  I worked on this every day for a week, and got as far as the very last repeat on the edging—two inches from the finish line, friends, with ten minutes of knitting remaining—and ran out of yarn.  I meant to take a picture of that, the urgent scarf with its ten remaining stitches and the sad, frayed length of yarn that was left, but I was crumpled by it, and also it was eleven o’clock at night.  Which is not too late an hour to quickly order more yarn--a crusher, since I only needed about another five yards, but it must be done, and when it arrived yesterday, I sat down for half a second and finished the edging. 

Then I soaked it in the sink and pinned it out to dry overnight.  That wishbone shape is the result of my experiment—I wanted to know what would happen if I increased at both ends of every row, instead of just every right side row, and now I know.   It makes a wishbone shape.  Not unlovely; a little bit interesting. 

Perfect for summer, which really will be here soon.  Maybe we’ll go for a walk.