What exactly is a knitted horseshoe scarf?

Kind readers have put up with me talking about how brain fogged I've been while knitting the horseshoe scarf.  Well, at last, here we are!** 

** Apologies for the rumpled shirt photos. More likely to be worn with a plain tee or to fill in a neckline in cooler weather.

The back story is that I improvised one in a hurry on the Addi Express (19 widely spaced pegs) knitting machine some years ago. When it became too tatty, I scrambled up a replacement on the same machine. The key thing was a curved back neckline - straight scarves sneak into the curve above my prominent spine bone - together with some way of fastening it at the front. What I came up with was a cross between a round collar, a sailor collar, and a boy-scout neckerchief. You really can see a knitted 'woggle'.

Do you ever find that something rushed up in whatever leftovers come to hand actually gets loads of use? This did!

Well, the white version has been exactly the throw-on-and-adjust no-fuss scarf that I wanted. There were a few things to improve on. It wasn't quite deep enough at the back of the neck. You can tell, if you peer hard at the back of the white version, that there's a gap between the scarf and the neckline of the RTW jumper. Not so good in winter. Could a different edge treatment give the extra depth? Let's try a garter stitch edge instead of a narrow rib. I also felt the tails on the front were too narrow for the length. Well, a broader edge will help that too.

This April I tried to read the stitches in the white one, write up the pattern, and hand-knit one in green or cream. Given both muddlement and a bad yarn choice (the variegated yarn was too fussy and the colour runs were too long), there will be no pictures of the green attempt. Started again in May with some unlabelled real wool-on-a-cone found at our local charity shop, using size 6mm needles. Much better, but hadn't allowed extra stitches on the outer edge. So with the last of the unused yarn and a little unpicking to reuse some of the failed attempt, there was enough to start again.

Finally, I have a wearable cream horseshoe scarf.  As always, it could be even better. If I make this again, I'd shape every four rows rather than every two on the tails to make them pointy-er. A smaller woggle, currently 8sts x 24rows, would reduce bulk in the tails, too.

I'm not sure whether I prefer it with the woggle or with my mouse shawl-pin. Probably a different choice summer and winter. What do you think?