Just finished off a scarf for a rather nerdy friend of mine’s birthday! It’s a Fibonacci Scarf! A Fibonacci sequence is a mathematical sequence of numbers that’s special for some reason. No, I don’t know why, and I don’t particularly care. The point is, my nerdy friend will appreciate it. You may have noticed that the pattern I linked to is a knitting one – I don’t know of any crochet versions out there. However, since I am fundamentally incapable of knitting, I just tweaked the pattern and crocheted it instead, entirely in single crochet. I started with a chain of 30, and then just followed the row numbers on the original pattern. I had no idea if it would work or not while I was working on it, but it ended up looking pretty good!

Another thing about my nerdy friend is, he’s a vegan. This meant I had fewer options when it came to yarn selection for this project, and was quite troublesome. I know in theory that there are probably hundreds of various acrylic, bamboo and cotton yarns out there – they’re just not in any of the Spotlights in South Australia 😛 Every time I found a nice, soft acrylic, it was only available in unsuitable, odd colours. I was looking for navy blue and red. These are not unusual colours. I would imagine they are quite popular colours. Apparently, the yarn manufacturers disagree. I saw all manner of oranges, pinks, teals, purples and multicoloured yarns, but the only brand that had both the colours I needed was a brand called Thorobred, which unfortunately is not known for its stellar quality. In fact, when I crocheted the first section of the scarf, I was about ready to throw it in the bin. It felt like a scourer! Luckily, my homies at the crochetcrochet community on Livejournal introduced me to the art of “killing” acrylic. I did try washing it with fabric softener before resorting to murdering it, but all that did was make the scarf smell of apples. Not bad, certainly, but not helpful either.

“Killing” acrylic is basically blocking it, except it’s an irreversible process. There are a couple of methods, I chose to pin it to the ironing board, cover it with a damp cloth and press it with lots of steam, and that worked just fine. It’s really, really soft now, and it grew a bit in length as well, which is always handy! I’m really pleased with how it turned out in the end, it far exceeded any of my expectations.

Now, to make a pi plushie and I’m all set for his birthday!