Hello everybody, this is part 1 out of 6 of my “Hand-knit scarf collection”. To start off with, I thought I would share with you my easiest (and definitely the nerdiest) scarf, inspired by the Harry Potter house Slytherin. This scarf can of course by modified to suit your favourite house. This scarf is the simplest in my collection for several reasons:

• It only requires you to be able to knit and purl, no other fancy stitches
• Picking up stitches is easy, seeing that all stitches are in tricot stitch
• Using an even number of rows for each section means less loose threads to fasten off
• No increases or decreases necessary

If you think this design is too simple for you, you could of course decorate the bottom of the scarf with frills/tassels, in the accent colour of your choosing. For the Slytherin scarf that would be silver. I thing THIS blogpost gives clear instructions on how to make tassels.

THE CHARACTERISTICS

This scarf is 25 cm wide, 260 cm long and weighs 200 grams

THE SUPPLIES

The yarn I used for this scarf were:

• Scheepjes Roma; dark green (1414)
  • 100% acrylic
• Zeeman Sparkle; grey with silver (80)
  • 95% acrylic
  • 5% metal thread

Both yarns were knit with a needle size 3.5-4, depending on how tight you knit and how tight you want your stitches to be.

Since the scarf weighed 200 grams, I used about 4 skeins of Scheepjes Roma dark green (50 grams per skein) and a bit of grey with silver, less than one skein of 100 grams.

THE PATTERN

As said before, all stitches were knit in tricot stitch, alternating a row of knitting and a row of purling. If you are looking for a basic tutorial on how to knit, check out THIS one for knitting and THIS one for purling.

This tutorial does require you to start a new colour on certain rows, which is quite easy to do, just knit as you normally would, only use the new colour of yarn, leaving some length at the beginning to make sure the tread doesn’t come loose. An example can be found in THIS video. I would advise you to not cut your yarn off if you have to pick up the same colour two rows later, the tread can simple be carried along this short length. A video that shows this can be found HERE.

The beginning and end of this scarf are a bit different than the middle part, so I will split up the patterning here.

The beginning and end:

Because I forgot to mention it previously, I cast on 34 stitches, but of course cast on as many stitches as you want to, to achieve the width you like!

• 16 rows of green, keep the thread on your work
• 2 rows of silver, you can cut of the threads of these rows long enough to hide them later, but you do not want to keep this thread long
• 4 rows of green, picking up the tread of the first 16 rows of green, now cut of with enough length to hide away
• 4 rows of silver, start with a new tread and after your rows, cut of the tread long enough to hide away
• 4 rows of green, start with a new tread and after your rows, don’t cut of the tread at the end
• 2 rows of silver, start with a new tread and after your rows, cut of the tread long enough to hide away
• 16 rows of green, using the tread of the previous four green rows to start

A diagram of the first rows can be seen below, each box represents a row. The loops indicate where the yarn can be carried along the side as mentioned before. The pattern can be knit over any number of stitches, the example here only shows 16 stitches.

The main part:

Alternate:

• 16 rows of green, keeping the threads running besides the silver rows
• 2 rows of silver, fastening off the threads each time

When you knit the pattern in the described manner, the scarf will come out like below. In the right picture you can see the front, in the left picture the back.

CONCLUSION

This scarf is the perfect project for the beginning knitter, seeing that it only uses simple purling and knitting, while also giving you a chance to learn to work with alternating colours and maybe even making tassels. It makes a scarf that is not too thick, but long enough to wrap multiple times if it is colder. I hope you like it and give it a try!