Why knit (or crochet) scarves? General directions

by Karin on June 6, 2010 · 0 comments

in Arts, Knitting

I thought I'd post some knit patterns that I've come up with for scarves.

The advantage to scarves is that they knit up fast, and if you are a new knitter, you can actually finish your project. Plus, if you are a knitter, they are relaxing because they are so simple.

Try to work with one skein per yarn only
This will keep your costs down. And you will likely finish it.

Save the multi-skein very long or wide scarves for a later day -- or keep one like that on one pair of needles and work on it in between doing the faster versions.

For the most part I try to use only one skein with an additional skein for texture, if needed (carrying two yarns.)

The number of yards in each skein will determine if I will need two of either of them. If the scarf is long enough with one skein of each, I add whatever is left over in the longer skein to my stash,if I'm not using it to add fullness to the fringe.

How do you keep the edges from curling and looking neat?
Slip the first stitch of every row in a knit direction, except the first row and the edge will be crisp.

Be careful binding off
Bind off very, very, very loosely so the scarf has good tension. I generally switch to a much larger needle to do this -- and still bind off loosely.

How do you make fringe?
Fold each fringe in half, use a crochet hook to pull the fold through a stitch. Feed the ends through the fold and tighten. Be sure to work from the same side for both ends so the folds are identical in appearance.

When doing fringe, I generally add fringe to the first end before I finish the scarf, because I feel like I'm ahead of the game that way, and I can get a feel for what it will look like -- and it looks like I've accomplished more. Plus it makes the final finishing very fast. It goes without saying that finish work is the more tedious.

How do you cut fringe?
If you know you are using fringe, you can cut the fringe before you begin to knit, then knit to the end of the yarn. If you know you need to conserve yarn for the body of the scarf, choose the shorter fringe and possibly fringe fewer stitches.

The easiest way is to wrap yarn around the short (or long) side of a DVD case, depending on how long you want the fringe to be -- remember you will be doubling it, so it is half as long as you cut it -- the same number of times as you have stitches (or less if you are fudging because you are running out of one of the yarns.)

You can use the leftover yarn (if you have any) to make additional fringe to put in at regular intervals, using the yarn up to the very end. That way, there is little to no waste. It's OK to add additional fringe from only the yarn that had more yardage, if that is all that is left.

Do you knit? or crochet? I do both, but right now I'm knitting.

Karin

Originally posted 2009-03-05 23:43:01.

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