Dear Life: Please Slow Down

I don't know why, but lately life has been flying by at a crazy speed. Last weekend was very busy, despite the fact that we both took Monday off (for Yom Kippur). We had our first baby class Saturday morning, had an engagement party to go to on Saturday night, met the Mister's parents for brunch on Sunday morning, and then spent Sunday evening and most of the day Monday in synagogue. Yesterday we went back to work and had a three-hour baby class in the evening, and now we're preparing to move in with my parents for a few days while we have the wood floors on the first floor of our house refinished (during which time I have a high school reunion, we have a wedding to go to, and the Mister is running a 5K). Are you surprised that I'm exhausted?

Amazingly, in the middle of all this craziness, I did manage to finish my brother's scarf. (The purpose of this crappy picture is only to show you just how long it is after blocking.)

Pattern: my own (see below)
Yarn: Cascade 220 (100% Peruvian highland wool), colors 8393/Navy and 7827/Goldenrod, approximately 2.5 skeins each
Needles: 16" US 7 (4.5 mm) Addi Turbo circs
Started/Completed: August 27/September 25
Dimensions: 8" wide by approximately 93" long, excluding fringe

My brother rarely requests any hand-knit items, so when he does ask for something, I make sure to deliver. This summer, he asked if I could knit him a Harry Potter-esque scarf in his school colors for his final year at college. Bearing in mind that brother grows a beard in the winter just to keep his face warm, I figured a tube scarf was in order, with a double thickness for maximum warmth.

I kept the pattern really simple: I cast on what seemed like a good number of stitches to fill up the 16" needle (which turned out out to be 90) and purled the middle stitch and the last stitch to create a fold line on either side of the scarf. I changed colors every six inches and knit until I was just about out of yarn and it seemed long enough (that turned out to be 12 stripes). Were it not for the fact that a half skein of the navy yarn went missing somewhere in the middle, I would have made it even longer, but it turned out to be long enough in the end. I found some leftover navy Cascade from my dad's birthday sweater that I used for the fringe, and then I blocked the heck out of it.

It's now long enough that, if I drape it around my neck, it nearly reaches my feet. It should be sufficient to keep my 6'2" brother warm this winter, don't you think?