Hand made lovin'

I think my brother is yearning for some handmade love. My dad, though on the elderly side and a little emphysema-ish, is perpetually underdressed for going outside, particularly when he goes to shovel (which I have repeatedly told him not to do, but he doesn’t listen and refuses to ask me to do it if I haven’t noticed the snow due to my basement dwelling). So I offered to knit him a scarf when he came in raspy and cold from shovelling. I happen to have some yarn in an alpaca/merino/silk blend in a dark green (one of his favourite colours), but he said he wouldn’t wear it. My brother pipes up: “I’d wear one!” quite gleefully/hopefully. Its not the first time he has hinted at wanting a knit piece, but I’ve been mid project at the time and I’m trying very hard to limit the number of projects I have going at one time (oh so hard). And really and truly, after the year he has had, I think he deserves/needs some random acts of knitting along with kindness. I’m not entirely sure I have quite enough of the yarn for a good sized scarf, but I figure it won’t hurt to try and I have a deep red left over from mittens that, although it is a slightly smaller gauge, might make some nice contrasting stripes at the ends in order to stretch things out a bit more. Now my only challenge is to figure out a way to add visual interest without using up too much more yarn than stockinette would in order to maximize the scarf’s length. Hmmm.. time to get out the stitch dictionaries and ponder.