As described and requested by Marty, age 7.5.
Goal is approximately 48 inches long.

Head: 72 stitches (36 each side), 80 rows
Scales: multiple of 10 sts, 12 rows

Provisional cast on: 72

Face:
Dark in left hand, light in right
Underside: reverse

Eyes: assorted odds and ends from the stash. The orange and white are plied and definitely have a different texture, but I refuse to buy yarn for so few stitches. I sort of faux-intarsia-ed each eye on it’s own. Will probably do the same for the nose.

Not thrilled with my colorwork tension. Did some inside-out, but ended up with loose stitches at the sides (magic loop). Constant vigilance!

I have had to manipulate the colors, and am afraid I let it go too long in the middle. If I did this again, I’d cut & splice as soon as I noticed them getting to similar, without wishful thinking that it wasn’t happening. But it’s fine.

Am now toying with the idea of color-working the scales with two skeins, and continuing the underside colorwork. This is going to be one damn warm scarf.

Body:
After a lot of “playing” (and cursing), I have abandoned the idea of textured scales. The colorwork scales look great, so I’m continuing them around to the back, adding spikes from the Morehouse hat (in the background color).

• ~11 rows of scales = 12”
• 44 rows of scales = 48” spikes start at 14th row of scales (not including the face narrowing) -> 30 scale rows in the body
• spikes are (very) approximately 3 rows of scales long
• there will be approximately 10 spikes
• at some point will need to start decreasing towards the tail; maybe after 5 spikes? (would be a bit more than the last foot)

Spike 1: 19 sts (seems a bit small)
Spike 2: 23 sts
Spike 3: 23 sts
Spike 4: 19 sts (decreased 3 times on each side)
Spike 5: 19 sts (decreases 2? times on each side)

The spikes pose a problem with colorwork tension. I tried a few things and ended up catching the floats throughout the spike.

There is an unfortunate abrupt color change in the yarn at the 2nd spike. I want to fix it, but I’m not going to.

More:
I am intrigued by Beccarichmond’s notes about spike size and decreases. I may add an extra double decrease at the end of each spike (and beginning?).

• Spike 1: 20 rows

• Spike 2: 18 rows

• Spike 3: 18 rows

• Spike 4: 16 rows

• Spike 5: 14 rows

• Spike 6: 14 rows

• Spike 7: 12 rows

• Spike 8: 12 rows

• Spike 9: 10 rows

• Spike 10: 8 rows

• Decreased on last row of every spike