Kat's Snake Scarf

The snake scarf is finished!

Funny that, by coincidence, my last two FOs have been wearable reptiles, when I've never knitted anything remotely animal-like before. :) A few days before finals, my friend Kat came up (she lives on the floor below me) and asked if I could duplicate this scarf for her. I've never tried to copy a knitted item exactly before, so I was a little afraid to do it, but it looked easy enough so I tried it out. I like the turnout.

Pattern: my own, based off of the snake scarf on Chocosho.com.
Yarn: KnitPicks Wool of the Andes in Coal and Natural, just over 110 yds. each, and a few inches of red Cascade 220.
Needles: US6 straights
Techniques Learned: the raised center stitch decrease (last decrease method shown here), creating a pattern based off two photos
Recipient: Kat B.

Notes:
- This was a fun project, if only because I got to use my head trying to figure it out. It's pretty straightforward--stripes knitted in stockinette so they roll, with decreases at both ends to look like the head and tail.
- I had to experiment with the decreases for a while; at first I couldn't understand why the head decreases didn't look right, and then when I tried the correct decrease method on the tail end, it didn't work because I was trying to fit two extra rows in between decreases. So, on the tail end, there are simple k2togs and ssks on either side of the center stitch every 3 rows.
- Wool of the Andes isn't my favorite yarn in the world, but it's not my least favorite either. It's a nice, sturdy, reliable yarn, in my opinion. Kat picked out the colors down to the eye color, so I didn't have to worry too much about that (and I would have--choosing colors is always a killer for me).
- Weaving in ends on this sucker was a pain. But what can you do.
- I hope she likes it. Going to try to mail it out tomorrow, if possible; she's doing an internship in New York in January and really wants to show it off.

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