Linen Stitch Scarf

 

Finished, and fabulous!  This scarf is perfectly me—hippie-ish but also a little bit tweedy.  It’s wild, but only when you really look at it up close.  Otherwise, it seems kind of subdued, vaguely colorful, just interesting.  It’s also another one of those stash-busters I love so much—what is it about a project that turns leftovers into something beautiful?  It’s the best thing ever. 

The pattern is easy—I found it here—and you can make it any length or width you want (or your scraps will allow.)  Here’s a look at the stitches up close:

I have a huge pile of sock yarn leftovers.  As in, for every stripe of color you see there, I have a pair of socks, and there’s always a little bit leftover, and you know you can’t just get rid of it, so into the cupboard it goes.  It’s such pretty yarn, you never know…sometimes an excellent idea will come along.  Like this one.  Right, anyway.  So, this is knit in linen stitch, which is basically knit one, slip one with the yarn in front, etc.  Then on the back row you slip the knit stitch and purl the slipped stitch—only I realized a few rows in that if I added a new color on each row, I would only have to work the right side every time!  (What?)  I know, this is weird…okay, each row is a different color, and I used a different yarn.  Normally, doing that means you have to weave in a whole bunch of ends and ugh, that’s a pain.  But this scarf is worked end to end, the long way, so the ends just hang there, waiting to become the fringe (clever, right?)  So after finishing each row, instead of turning it around and working the back side of the fabric, I just broke the yarn leaving a five or six inch tail, then pushed all the stitches back to the other end of the long needle and started at the beginning again.  Right side row, every time.  Once I figured that out, this thing was a breeze. 

When I decided it was wide enough, I just bound off the (450 stitch!) last row and then tied the fringe, trimming it to about 3 1/2” , then steam-blocked it to straighten out the edges. 

You can use any kind of leftovers you have—I think one done in colorful worsted-weight would be so spectacular.  Might do that one next, stay tuned.