Cat Lace

Merry Christmas or other holiday of your choice!
Finally, I can show you my mom's Christmas gift, an incredible lace scarf.
I found the pattern at the LYS, and it was too cute to pass up (I'll explain that in a second). Unfortunatley, it came as part of a kit and the wool it included was pretty but scratchy. My mom is insane about scratchiness (no seriously, she has applied the word to cashmere). So I talked them into selling me just the pattern and substituted some nice laceweight merino.
Now about the pattern. It's a Blackberry Ridge pattern, and they really do some amazing lace patterns. But this one has a little story to go with it. It's a week in the life of a knitter's cat.
From bottom to top, it goes like this:


First, there's a cat paw border at the bottom. Look! It's a little cat paw! (It has six toes though. I've always liked those six toed cats but I've never had one. I think it would be a selling point for me.)
Then on Monday, he looks out the windows through the blinds. On Tuesday, he plays in the garden.



On Wednesday, he looks at the birds in their birdhouses.



On Thursday, he falls in the pond. On Friday, he eats some thistles.



On Saturday, he tiptoes through the tulips. On Sunday (my favorite), he chases butterflies.



Both halves are identical, have some ribbing at the neck and are (in theory) grafted together. Grafting and I didn't get along so well, particularly with a ribbed pattern. But I was kind of finishing this last minute, and it is at the back of the neck, so I'm just pretending it didn't happen. There's a bit of a seam, but seriously. This thing is complicated enough.
The original pattern calls for one scarf of each day of the week. That would have been an awesome idea, and I even considered it, boxing each one with its little explanation. Then I realized that was so never going to happen. The sampler wound up being a lot more fun because of the changing lace patterns. I didn't get bored (except at the ribbing). I'm not sure that would have been the case if I'd tried a whole scarf out of each one anyhow. Well, maybe in the future.
I do really like the idea of lace having a story though. Maybe next time I'll try to write my own.

In summary:

Pattern: A Week in the Life of Knitter's Cat (Blackberry Ridge)
Yarn: Skacel Laceweight (100% merino) in white. It barely made a dent in the 1350 yard skein.
Needles: Size 2. Yeah, size 2.
Time: A few weeks, but required complete attention
Cost: The major cost here was time, but I'm still not putting exact amounts in case my mom reads this.