I need a new scarf

I'm making a scarf, using Artesano alpaca, in a natural colour which I think they call camel. It is a pale beige, a colour I like and which suits me. It is soft, and I can feel the warmth as I knit it. I always thought other people were being a bit silly when they said their knitting gave off warmth, but this one really does.

I'm just over halfway through - I know that because I only bought two balls, and I've finished one of them.

I'm using a pattern that was in Simply Knitting a few months ago: I think it is the same stitches as in the "Misty Garden" scarf that lots of people blog about. It has a simple stitch pattern that achieves a complicated look - three rows of either purl or knit, and one row with yarn-overs and knit togethers.

I could have used the pattern that the yarn company are pushing, but I didn't like it when I tried it out in cheap, boring, yucky-coloured acrylic. So instead I chose the Simply Knitting pattern.

(If you look round their website, you'll see a lovely crotchet flower shrug: the pattern for that was in Simply Knitting, and I used it to make a square for the blanket I am making to teach myself crotchet.

Back to the scarf - at the halfway stage:

I need to finish it: I've just got rid of my 'current' scarf, the one I sling round my neck when I go to the shop, or to get the kids from school, or just anywhere. I've had it a few years, and I noticed a couple of days ago it had a small hole. The hole is tiny - was tiny - and the scarf was still perfectly wearable.

However yesterday, I was at my parent's house, helping them empty their attic before their Great Move. The attic is full of neatly stacked boxes, all carefully labelled. Some of the boxes contain carefully labelled rubbish, such as the electric kettle, in its original box which is probably 30 years old. (It isn't necessarily an unused kettle: my parents would store the box even when the kettle was in use.)

I brought down a sackful of worn-out clothes. I don't quite know the thought process that led to them being there (I can guess - "worn out socks have many uses such as dusters and sock puppets, therefore let us keep many, even if we don't use any"). So I loaded them into my car and stopped at the textile bank on the way home. I put in my three bags of unwanted stuff, and looked at my scarf. I thought about the warn out socks, and before I could change my mind, bundled the scarf in as well.

So now I need to get going with this new scarf.