Thursday 16 September 2010

Linen Stitch Scarf



I finished my linen stitch scarf the other day. Very simple, very fun! Used up lots of scrap yarn. I used every last inch of 7 different leftover balls of yarn, and made a good dent in a couple more. This is kind of a non-pattern, more like a huge linen stitch swatch.

Linen Stitch Scarf
This is what I did:

With 24", 4mm circular needle and fingering weight yarn, cast on 500 stitches.
Knitting back and forth repeat the next two rows until your scarf is about 5" or 6" wide (or until you're happy with the width.)
Row 1: *k1, slip 1 with yarn in front* repeat to end.
Row 2: *p1, slip 1 with yarn in back* repeat to end.
When you've reached your desired width, cast off on wrong side in knit.

Linen Stitch Scarf

The finished length, not including fringe, is about 65 inches long. Plenty of length to really wrap around your neck on a cold day. I gently blocked my scarf with a steam iron, I don't think it really needs a real wet blocking, I just wanted to kind of flatten out the texture, iron out any wrinkles.

I switched colours whenever I felt like it, usually working back and forth 2 or 3 times with each new colour. When I wanted to change colours I would leave a 6 inch tail of both the new colour and the colour I was dropping, then I would tie the tails together and leave them to hang as fringe. When I was all finished I cut 12 inch pieces of yarn and added them to the edges as fringe to fill in any gaps. There's nothing worse then sad, sparse fringe!

And Voila! A lovely, colourful textured scarf!

Linen Stitch Scarf

I used lots of different colours in this version. But I'm toying with the idea of trying another one with fewer colours, maybe one multi combined with two coordinating solids. I think that it would look smashing!

And as an extra bonus, this scarf looks equally good on dogs as it does on humans!

Linen Stitch Scarf