It just about killed me ...

... but I didn't give this to my husband until it was finished. I am the queen of wrapping up an unfinished object and giving it to someone along with a promise to finish it "soon." And I usually do, but it just takes some of the oomph out of the gift-giving experience. Watching me knit and maybe grumble at the chart and bind off and weave the ends in and then catching the scarf as I toss it from across the room just isn't the same as opening up a package to find a lovely, soft, finished DNA Double Helix scarf:


As Maggie Righetti would say, note the hand position. My husband has carefully smoothed the scarf to display the cables, and he is HOLDING IT DOWN because this thing is alive. It would twist and turn and flip to the backside in seconds if he let go, which I guess is not inappropriate for DNA or any kind of helix. But it's frustrating. I don't know if a different yarn would behave better; this is Berroco Ultra Alpaca (50% wool, 50% alpaca) which you would think would have enough wool to be stable.

It was a fun pattern to knit, though one that required some concentration. The sides of the helix are not parallel; sometimes they both move in the same direction but at different speeds, sometimes they move in different directions, and then there's the ridges in the center of the cable to keep in mind as well. By the last go-round I felt like I had some idea what would happen in the next row. I still had to check, but I didn't find myself with too many center stitches and not enough outside stitches, or vice versa, which happened fairly frequently on the first half of the scarf. (No, I didn't rip back. I decreased the excess stitches and added new ones where they were needed. Can you spot where? I didn't think so.) (And even if you can, my husband can't.)

I wish I could say that I was done with my Christmas knitting, but I'm not. Nearly done, though.