Reclamations and progress

We're having a garage sale to raise money for the chorus this weekend, and I'm doing a little housecleaning to gather items to take. In the midst of the mess that is my living room/computer area, I found a couple abandoned projects. One I had taken off the needles as I apparently needed the needle for something else, so I reclaimed the yarn from what appeared to be a diagonal baby blanket - that yarn is probably still destined for a baby blanket of some sort, but for now it will go back into the stash.

I also came across my scribble lace stole that I've had in progress for about two years now -- from the bulky wool I brought back from Germany and a fine laceweight on a cone from Habu. I think I'll pop in a movie and get working on that again - it will make good DVD knitting.

Oh, and I promised pics of the magic scarf steps, didn't I? Well, without further ado:

Steps to Knitting a Magic Scarf

1. Cast on sufficient stitches for about half to three-quarters of the width you want.
2. Knit straight in stockingette stitch for as long as you want, but until it is at least half the length you want. No, I have no magic formula for how long the scarf will be at the end.
   Scarf in progress:
   
3. Cast off with a crochet hook slightly larger than the needles used to knit the scarf, using the method *K1 (with hook), Chain 1, drop 1 from the left needle, K1 (with hook), Pass first stitch over second to bind off* and repeat from * to * until the end of the row. As so:
   
4. Once bound off, you should have something that looks like this:
   
5. Then, just pull:
   

If you google "magic scarf knitting pattern" you may come up with a few more sites where people have attempted this in various incarnations. I used Koigu Painter's Palette Premium Merino and size 4 needles, knitted flat. I haven't measured the finished product yet because I haven't pulled out all the length -- several others are wanting to see this final step. Once it's done, I'll post the comparison and final photos.

Cheers!