Knit Knacks: Boy's Scarf

 

Boy loves red. Red and elephants. So, he requested a red and white scarf with elephants on it. I found a chart for an elephant on ravelry.com, but it needed some tweaking before it would work. I'm pretty happy with how this turned out.

I cast on (with two strands of yarn) 20 stitches (both colors, 40 stitches total, front and back).

The checkerboard pattern was 4 X 4. At every edge I slipped the last stitch as if I were purling, to get that pretty braided-looking edge.

If I could change anything, looking back, I would have turned the elephant to being feet down on both ends of the scarf.

I realized, once I got to Boy's name on the scarf, that, unless I got creative, his name was going to be backwards on one side. That did not make me happy. So I started brainstorming, and created a chart that did different things on each side, rather than stitching a reversible pattern.

So, on this particular scarf, his name is on one side, and, on the other side, his name is there, but flipped horizontally in the opposite direction. (Sadly this means, on one side, the elephants are upside down when you read his name, something I fixed with NoWay's scarf.

I measured the scarf to be just a little taller than Boy himself. This seems to be a good length for him, particularly as I didn't want to do all the work and have it only fit for one season.

We live in a hot climate, so we don't even really need scarves, but Boy enjoyed wearing his scarf to school everyday.

chart for elephant 10 X  15 (I excluded the last stitch on the tail)
If you look at the pattern you can see the arrows to show which direction to read the pattern on each row. This really is essential, with double knitting, or it won't look like anything at all!

Knit Knacks: The Keith Scarf

Here's my sweetheart looking ultra self-conscious. I put the poor guy on the spot with this one.

It's fair.

Because, right after I finished his blanket (the insane one, remember that one? Perhaps this will refresh the memory) he told me what he really wanted now was a scarf with checkerboard blocks on it.

I had little time, but it was done for his birthday.

After the blanket, this was actually a pretty easy project. Using the double knitting method, it requires two balls of  contrasting yarn. I cast on about 30 stitches (both colors) and then knit five of each color, alternating yarns after every five stitches. In the double knitting stitch, this meant I was simply switching the yarns in my hand, so fairly quick and easy. 

Each block was 5 X 5, so I would stitch five stitches, switch colors, and repeat to the end of the row, for five rows, and then switch to the next color. It's fairly simple.

For the fringe, I put three strands of yarn per stitch. To get even length I wrapped the yarn from my hand around my elbow in a loop many times and then cut the strands in half, all together. 

My family liked it so much that all of the children requested scarves.