Scarf from February 1980 - Workbasket Magazine

This week's pattern is from a February Workbasket pattern. They have directions for a scarf, cap, gloves and legwarmers in some variation of the stitch pattern they give you. Of course, the amounts of yarn given are for the entire set so if you want to make just one of these you'll be guessing at the amounts.

Materials include:
Columbia Minerva John Kloss Heather yarn; 12 ounces of Gray (MC), 4 ounces of each of the other colors they give as Rice (R), Brown (B), Silver Gray (G), Red Onion (O).
An I hook for the scarf (other items use different sizes).
A tapestry needle and 12 inches of 1/2 inch elastic (they don't say in this part what the elastic is for but I was reasonably sure it wasn't the scarf).

The yarn they specify seems to be a sport weight yarn. I ended up going up to a DK weight and used leftover Bernat Softee Baby for the main part of the scarf. The other colors were mostly scraps of DK weight yarn I had.

There is a gauge and I was fairly close to it with the DK weight yarn.
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I wasn't impressed by the use of yarn that has unusual color names and that they used a black and white photo for this project. In particular, they used Rice as a color name and gave it the abbreviation R but also had Red Onion which was an O. I ended up using my own colors and had to write out my own color plan for the different rows.  Their choice of "O" for Red was even worse when I realized that they were also using "O" as an abbreviation for yarn over.
Row 3 reads, "Sc in first ch 1 sp, ch 1, O, draw up a lp in next ch 1 sp, (O, draw up a lp in the same sp 4 times, O and through 11 lps on hook, O draw through lp on hook (popcorn made)..." 

I used white for Rice, green for the Main Color/gray, blue and black for Brown, gray for Red Onion. Once you get through the confusing color and yarn over abbreviations this turns out to be linen stitch with a row of popcorn stitches. It wasn't complicated just not written out very well.
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My handwritten color order.

I also guessed wrong on how much blue yarn I would need so I ended up making one end of the scarf blue and the other black.

​Here are the final photos:

I think the edges are a little messy and it could really use a border but it's fine the way it is too.

Criteria:
Is the pattern easy to understand? No.
If there is a gauge, could I match it? Yes.
Does it look like the photo? Sort of. I think they used two colors for the bobbles and I didn't see how they did that with the color order in the pattern.
Would someone wear this? Yes.
Did I enjoy making it? Eh. Once I got over the annoyance at their confusing abbreviations it went ok. I didn't hate making it but I wouldn't make this again.

That looks like two yeses and two half yeses so that makes this a 3 out of 5.

Next week it's not a scarf and it's a special Valentine patern!