Tuesday 18 November 2008

Super simple Rope Scarf


Since having my first baby 2 and a half years ago, I have been exploring ways to make simple but effective pieces that can quickly be put down without the fear of stitches being dropped or increasingly active little fingers getting a hold of pointy needles. So, I went back to basics and started experimenting with the most basic of finger knitting techniques and came up with a rope scarf design.

Basic finger knitting is simply a chain stitch created with your fingers. Just like the crochet chain you create a slip knot, and then using your thumb and index finger pull the yarn through the loop in the slip knot and form a new loop. Keep doing this until you have a long rope then start experimenting with it.

The scarf in the photo was made with one ball (100gm) of our Slubby yarn in a dusty pink multi-colour. I finger knitted the whole ball (less 1 m) into a long rope and then lay it out across a long bench zig zagging back and forth 7 times to create an overall scarf length of about 1.7 metres at the same time aligning the colour variations. The colour that stands out the most was positioned at each end. I then cut and knotted the yarn where it turned resulting in 7 individual strands. To tie them all together I used the left over piece of matching yarn to individually tie the strands to each other in two places about shoulder width apart, leaving about a 1cm gap between each knot.

The effect is a lovely rope scarf which highlights the colour variations in the multi-coloured yarn. This project works best with multi-coloured yarns that have been dyed on a hank and repeat the colour range consistently. Try to pick a hank that has a couple of contrasting colours and have fun.

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