Leftover Stripey Scarf

Several weeks ago now, Anne turned up at our Monday morning knitting group and got out her new project, which we hadn't seen before.  At first glance, it looked like a big sock.  But it wasn't.

It was a scarf.  Several of us had a look and asked her how she was making it.  Very simply it would seem.  Cast on around 80 sts on 2.75mm needles (circular, two circulars, dpns, whatever's your preferred method for knitting in the round) and start knitting round and round, striping two balls of yarn (two rounds per stripe) and changing colour whenever you feel like it.  Knowing that I had some small balls of Colinette Jitterbug (I'd bought two of their Creative packs a while back) and I decided that I'd stripe them with some cream yarn.  I went to the Wool Warehouse website, had a look and bought four x 50g balls of Drops Baby Merino (I think that's what it's called) in cream.

I decided to have pointy ends on my scarf, so I cast on 4 stitches and then increased every other row.  For the first increase, I picked up one stitch in the middle of each side to make 5 stitches and after that, increased one stitch at either edge of the scarf (so, k1, kfb, knit until 3 stitches remain, kfb, k2 - repeat on the other side*) every other round until I had 45 sts on each side of the scarf.

*use whatever increase you like best; I like the little bumps I get with kfb.

After that, it was a case of knitting round and round, striping up and changing yarn as and when I felt like it.

These are the Colinette Jitterbug yarns I'm using:

There's also a magenta shade, but that's the coloured yarn I'm using at the moment.  I'm not sure about the pastel pink/lilac yarn, but I'll see how it goes; I can always rip back if I decide I don't like it.

Progress:

Sorry the photos are slightly out of focus; my camera doesn't seem to be able to cope with so much colour, or stripes.  The colours aren't quite so brash in real life (but it's dull outside so I've got the lights on); they're a bit richer and blend a bit better to the naked eye.

Once I decide it's long enough, I'll do decreases every other round to get back to 4 stitches and then cast off (or Kitchener stitch/graft the end).  If I was leaving the ends flat (and there's a good chance I'll make a similar scarf again in the future), then I'd probably cast on provisionally and do a three-needle cast-off at either end.

I wondered about putting a pom-pom at each end but I've never been good at making them, even with a pom-pom maker, so I'll probably make a multi-coloured tassel of some sort to put at either end.

Some links for you.

I Googled left-over sock yarn stripey scarf (or something similar) and came across this one on the Cozy Things blog (which I've added to my blog reading list).

There's also the Killimanjaro pattern Ravelry (it costs US$ 3.00) which is more similar to the one that Anne made.

There are many possibilities for making a similar scarf.  One of my other knitting friends, Nadia, just knitted an inch or two in one yarn and then changed it for another one.  You could make a magic ball of left-over yarn and just knit a long tube, or you could make two magic balls and stripe them.

PS.  Here's a link to Anne's scarf (I hadn't noticed that she'd added a photo on her Ravelry project page).

I'm off to do a bit more spinning before I start to get dinner ready.  One of my aims for this year is to average 30 mins of spinning a day.  I hardly made a dent in my fibre stash last year and, in fact, it might be bigger than it was 12 months ago.