Tips for Designing Scarves - 10/3/2006 Designing scarves is both simple and fun. Choosing the yarn, needles, stitch pattern and finishing are all key elements in knitwear design. We’ve gathered together tips and observations from our experience and that of our customers who continually surprise us with their creativity. When choosing the yarn for your scarf consider not only how the yarn feels and looks, but anticipate how it will knit up in your pattern stitch and how it will wear. Novelty yarns have interesting surfaces and knit up best in garter, seed or rib stitch patterns. Use smooth spun yarns for textured and cable patterns. If the yarn is fuzzy, hairy or loosely spun it may blur or flatten a textured stitch pattern. With ribbon yarns we like to use elongated stitches, wrapping the yarn around the needle at least twice on the first row and then dropping the extra loops on the next row. Simple yarnover or laddered drop stitch patterns also work well with ribbon or novelties since they are open and will display the unique characteristics of these yarns. For these yarns we generally suggest using needles that are three to four times the size needed to knit a sweater. The Tagliatelli scarf available in our online store is a merino ribbon that we knit on #19 needles. Further on we’ve given tips on stitch patterns themselves. Some fibers will effect how your scarf wears over time. Mohair gives you lightweight warmth and durability. But mohair will shed when worn against other animal fiber clothing such as a wool coat. It will not shed onto a nylon parka. If your yarn is predominantly rayon or viscose, your scarf will be limp, silky and have brilliant color. But your scarf will grow and narrow over time. Alpaca is warm, soft and drapes beautifully but it also will grow downward over time especially if the yarn used is heavier than sport weight. To anticipate this effect on your scarf, knit a test swatch, record its width and length, and hang it on a hanger or clothesline with a small weight. After 48 hours measure again and note the differences. Take those differences into account by casting on additional stitches for width and for stopping short of your desired length. We’ve found that many of our customers like to combine two or more yarns together when knitting their scarves. The yarns are mostly variegated novelties and the knitting is quick on big needles. But sometimes you may want to show off dissimilar yarns by using them individually in lengthwise stripes. If the yarns have different gauges, your edges may be uneven and your surface wavy. You can minimize these effects by knitting the finer of the yarns on the larger needles making part of your scarf airier and looser or doubling this yarn. Or you could knit a ruched scarf where a flat, smooth band alternates with a loose, ruffled band. On the same number stitches, knit the finer yarn on very small needles and the thicker yarn on larger needles. There are thousands of stitch patterns available to you to use to knit your scarf. You can find them in the many published stitch directories. We consider Barbara Walker’s four volumes to be among the most informative and helpful. Some of the stitch patterns we discuss below are familiar to most knitters and the others you can find in these directories. Scarves knit in garter stitch will lie flat, have self-finishing edges and be reversible. Garter stitch looks entirely different and more dramatic when knit on very large needles. Also try using a pair of needles where one needle is several sizes larger than the other needle for an attractive variation. If you chose garter stitch as an all around border for a scarf knit in stockinette stitch, use a smaller needle for the bottom and top edges to prevent them from stretching and flaring out; and for firmer side edges, slip the first stitch of every row as if to purl keeping your yarn to the back. Stockinette stitch will curl the edges of your scarf: the ends will curl up and the sides will curl inward. This is fine if you want to make your scarf look like a long, narrow tube you can wrap multiple times around your neck. To keep edges uncurled, knit several rows at the beginning and end and several stitches on each side in a flat lying stitch pattern such as garter, seed, or double moss. As a further measure you can knit periodic stripes of garter stitch across the scarf. Or take one of the new fur-like yarns and crochet one or more rows of single crochet around the entire scarf. Some lace patterns will cause scarf edges to scallop or ripple in an attractive way such as the Feather and Fan or Old Shale pattern. It is often possible to change the stockinette stitch base of lace patterns to garter stitch for a reversible scarf. Also, most lace patterns have a one-way direction. Your scarf has two directions: up and down. For both sides to be in the same direction, knit two panels and join at the back of the neck by seaming, grafting or binding off the two sets of stitches together. Lace scarves should be blocked to show off their patterns. Rib patterns are mostly reversible and non-curling. Ribs can be either even or uneven. The broader the ribs, the less the scarf will pull in. There are several broken rib patterns such as Mistake Stitch Rib that will make up into cozy, tailored scarves. If you want your cable scarf to be reversible, replace the usual stockinette stitch with ribs and cable the ribs. Knitwear designer, Lilly Chin, offers a great instructional pattern for such a reversible, cabled scarf. Ribbed scarves take on a fun, festive look when they are striped in many bold colors. The scarf, Who, shown here and available in our online store is a great example. For a clean break between colors, knit the first row of the new color resuming your rib pattern on the next row. Only one side will show the broken line. Slip stitch patterns work best with variegated yarns since they move and blend colors. They are an easy way to work with multiple colors since you handle only one color at a time on any given row. It is also easier to mix yarn weights and types of yarns such as heavy with light and hairy with smooth since such variations tend to be evened out. Ribbon yarns work well in slip stitch patterns where the yarn float is carried in the front across several stitches giving the scarf the appearance of being woven. You will need to use fairly large needles since slip stitch patterns will make dense scarves. This will help firm up scarves knit in limp yarns, such as rayon, viscose or silk. You will also need more yarn since you will knit more rows per inch in comparison to most other stitch patterns for your desired length. Though slip stitch patterns are not reversible, most have an attractive, alternate side. Slip stitch scarves will lie flat and will not require blocking. There is an intriguing application of slip stitch that will give you a two color, two sided stockinette stitch scarf. You can even have each of the two colors in a different textured yarn. This technique is sometimes referred to as double knitting. Think of it as knitting a tube on one needle, with that needle needing to be a circular or double point needle. The tube has two sides, the stitches of each side being positioned alternately on your needle. One trip across the needle will knit one group of stitches or one side of the tube, while the other stitches for the other side of the tube are slipped. You then slide your stitches back to the tip of the needle, pick up the second yarn and work the slipped stitches slipping the previously worked stitches. When both yarns are at the same side, turn your work and repeat the process always leading off with the same color/texture. To know when to knit or purl the stitches, think of each side of the tube separately as to right and wrong sides or outside as knit and inside as purl. To introduce you to this fascinating technique look for our double-sided scarf in Dune and Splash in our online store. As you can tell we find knitting scarves to be one of the best ways to experiment and learn about our craft. We enjoy almost instant gratification since the projects are small and often require large sized needles. And with so many of our customers, whether they are new or experienced knitters joining in the fun, we hope that they too are also discovering the wonders of their craft.