Very Pretty Lace Scarf

I recently splurged on a few new books for my craft book library (more on that later), and among the new purchases was More Last Minute Knitted Gifts, which is truly a beautiful book full of projects that I am dying to make. I decided the first project I would tackle was the Very Pretty Lace Scarf as a birthday gift for a dear friend. It was my first time knitting lace, and I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn't as hard as I'd imagined it would be. I will definitely be trying my hand at it again.

My LYS doesn't carry the recommended yarn, so I decided to pair up Lang Alpaca Superlight with Malabrigo lace for this project. I have to say that while I loved knitting with these two yarns, I'm not sure it was the right choice for this project. The scarf knit up beautifully and is very warm, but it's a lot "poofier" than it would have been had I used the recommended yarn. Still, it turned out very well, and I'm hoping my friend will enjoy wearing it as much as I enjoyed knitting it.

The project is included in the "6 to 8 hour" projects section of the book, but, at least for me, it took much longer than that to complete. I typically knit during my commute, so there was much starting and stopping, and knitting in small spurts of time. It's hard to say exactly how many hours it took to knit up, but I'm pretty sure it was a lot more than 8 hours. I'm thinking that now that I've tried this pattern, the next time I knit it up (and there will be a next time, as I love it so!) it'll go faster.

What project have you recently completed?