Antique Ivory Swift

Will you JUST look at how beautiful this is?? Um anyone have $26,000 to spare? I'll pay ya back - I promise!

It is a very old, antique hand-carved swift of ivory from a website that shows antiques from the old scrimshaw and whaling days. You can't see at the bottom, but that is a little carved hand holding the stem.

Can you imagine the face of the wife of this whaler that presented this to her as a gift after being away sailing and whaling for god knows how long? So amazing! Back in those days these guys would carve ivory gifts for their wives while they were away - usually hair combs, or sometimes little toys for their children. But THIS is really something - and practical! She must have used it - oh would I love to be a fly on the wall back in those days just to see the kinds of things people used, and how they used them. But I'm off on another tangent.

There are more detailed pictures on the website, including some of the the gorgeous inlaid wooden box it comes in/with. Look at this link to the site and you can click on photos to enlarge them.

OK back to the knitting now. About that Leaf and Acorn scarf I've started; I ripped it out and started again because I ran into some mistakes and I wanted it to be perfect. So I started again, and once more I've run into a road block. And I even went so far in effort as to contact the owner of the ranch in Texas where the Mohair was made (her goats), hand-spun and dyed, to be sure I could get a second skein, so I can finish it. By the way, I may as well plug her. She has beautiful stuff and so far it's only available in Texas, but I called one of the shops (in Dallas) and they are willing to ship. In fact they are calling me when my yarn is in. It's http://www.elcoyoteranch.homestead.com/ . Check it out and tell her the woman who called this week about the avocado mohair sent you!

The mohair I received is in a color called Avocado, but I think it's more of a dark mint/something else. It's very pretty! And I don't like the standard pastel mint color in general. Oh I think I have a photo of it:

Unfortunately this picture doesn't do it justice. It's quite a different color than this...darker and richer - both. And it has a twang of lime or olive to it, that you can't see here.

The texture is gorgeous and the woman at the shop in Dallas said she does really really well with El Coyote Ranch's yarns.

So there's my plug - ok and once again. Now back to the errors in the Leaf and Acorn Scarf. I don't understand it, I've tried counting them out in the pattern, but the stitches are wrong. It seems to start around row 8. They claim you should have 76 stitches and I keep ending up with 75. Then on the next row I somehow ended up with 77 stitches, and I'm supposed to have 76. The following row is supposed to have 83 and I'm such a mess I'm back to 76? SO CONFUSED I don't know if i should keep following the pattern and ignore how many stitches they say I should have and see if it works out, or if I should somehow self-edit my stitches to match theirs. HELP HELP HELP!!! Someone please tell me what to do!! I posted the link to the pattern on the previous site. If anyone reads this please let me know what you think. I hope someone reads this and can help me.