Da Vinci Proportioned Scarf

Last year, Moocow and I visited The Yarn Tree in Brooklyn, which was a wonderful experience. At the time, our younger brother had tagged along, and he surprised us by being very patient as we went a little crazy. And, for the first time in living memory, he actually took some interest in some yarn, and requested that I knit something for him!

So, although the luscious Blue Sky Alpaca Duotones was more expensive than I would have normally thought to buy to use for a scarf for him (if he throws this in the washing machine, it's a goner!!!) I bought two skeins.

I looked around for scarf patterns and stitch patterns that I thought me might like, and knit some swatches to see what needle size I would need. He was very vague about his preferences, though.

Then, recently, I was teasing him about his "monkey arms." Of course, he is very tall and skinny, so all his limbs are rather long, but I was certain that his arms were on the slightly-abnormally-long side. Well, when he told me that he hated short scarves, and that he wanted one that would be long enough to wrap comfortably and still reach down further than his armpits, we decided that what he probably wanted was a scarf as long as his arm span. So, of course, I took a tape measure and measured his arm span, which turned out to be around 6 feet 4 inches.

Have you ever seen a picture of Da Vinci's sketches of human anatomy, in particular the one of a man with his four limbs outstretched, drawn within a circle? Well, basically, an average person's arm span is that same as his height. My brother is 6 feet 4 inches tall, so I guess he doesn't have monkey arms after all.

He and I agreed on the My So Called Scarf pattern. However, when I realised how long this scarf had to be, I also realised that I didn't have enough yarn! When I went online to order more from The Yarn Tree, I discovered that this colourway had been discontinued. Slight panic ensued, until I located more (on sale) at Kpixie. So, with disaster averted, I cast on and started knitting at the beginning of this month.

With such a bulky yarn, and size 15 needles, it's been growing rapidly as I have been able to knit on the bus to and from work. It's already almost as tall as I am, and I'm 5 feet tall. ^_^