Cabled Scarf: a history

Have you ever looked down at your knitting project and thought: why am I knitting this?  I don't remember ever wanting to knit this.  I don't know how this ever made it on the needles.  I was thinking that this evening as I was working on my creatively named #08 Cabled Scarf.  I started wondering how I ever came to be knitting it in the first place.  As far as I remember, this is what happened.

A long long time ago (December 2008) I got my hands on the Holiday issue of Vogue Knitting and must have added the pattern to my Ravelry queue.  I must not have loved it too much, because it stayed in my queue mostly forgotten until late 2010.  At that point, Knit Picks decided to close out the Robot color of it's Gloss DK yarn.  I decided that I had to have some of it before it disappeared, but felt like I needed a "reason" to buy it.

Turning to my Ravelry Queue, I discovered this scarf pattern which would "allow" me to buy six balls. Into the cart went the yarn.  When it arrived, I oohed and ahhed and squished and squooshed and then put the balls in the stash where they marinated for almost another year.

Then, this last December, I decided that the one type of project I wasn't currently working on was a cabled project (never mind the 12 others I had going at the time.)  Deciding I had to have a cable pattern on top of all my others, I turned to my queue for inspiration.  Imagine my surprised delight when I realized that I had both the pattern and the yarn to make this scarf.

It curls like mad right now, hopefully blocking will straighten that out a bit.

I cast on immediately after the discovery and happily knit half the scarf very quickly feeling extremely satisfied working the 32-row cable chart.  After about 30 inches, the charm wore off.  In my excitement over the cables, I must have forgotten that I actually hate knitting scarves.  Scarves are basically never ending swatches.  They get boring.  This project went in a bin, and was pretty much ignored from January until now.

Now that I'm trying to whittle down the number of WIPs I've got going, it's come out of the bin and progress is being made once again.  Next time I get the urge to use a particular technique, remind me to do it on a project with some shaping, will ya?

Check out the other projects over at Tami's.