My First Scarf

I did it! I crocheted a scarf, all by myself. :) A month ago, I had never held a crochet hook, and last night, I finished my first scarf. I may have mentioned before that I used a book recommended to me by my friend Melissa. It's Teach Yourself Visually: Crochet. It took a little trial and error at first to figure out what to do, but then I was able to follow the instructions in the book to figure out how to do a number of different stitches. I decided that the only way I'd ever have a sense of accomplishment with crochet would be if I actually made something, and a scarf seemed simple enough. So...here it is!
A few words of explanation, though. I didn't use a pattern. I found a scarf pattern in the book, but the only thing I took from it was the width of the rows and one of the stitches. Obviously, you can see that I used 2 colors. That's mainly because I assumed I would need more than one skein of yarn, and those were the 2 colors I bought to practice with. The "blocks" each have 16 rows simply because I had done 15 rows in one color when I decided I should use both colors. In order to change yarn, I did one more row. Unfortunately, since I wasn't using a pattern, I had no idea how many rows to do, so I just kept crocheting until I ran out of yarn. And that's how I ended up with this:Yes...it's a bit long. When I wrap it around my neck once, the ends still go down to about my knees. I'm thinking I should give it as a gift to someone taller...like maybe Shaquille O'Neal or Yao Ming.

For my next project, I'll be making another scarf, but this time, I'm planning on following a pattern. My intention is to give it to a friend for Christmas (as part of our "handmade gifts only" gift exchange!), so wish me luck!!