The checkered scarf Tony’s mom made

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Quite often people look at knitting as a winter activity. But if you want to wear that new sweater when the days get chilly, you’d better knit over summer, obviously. This summer my friend Tony asked his mom to knit him a scarf in Bio Merinos from Schoppel. The pattern is easy, the result is splendid.

Tony’s mom used 4 skeins of Schoppel Bio Merinos, Tony chose Mustard because he likes the colour so much. Bio Merinos is a certified organic yarn composed of 95% slightly felted merino wool and 5% of linen. For this scarf you’d use 3,5 mm needles. I would prefer my addi circulars of 60 cm long, but this project doesn’t require anything in particular: just use your favourite needles.

Tony’s mom cast on 54 stitches. That makes for a scarf of about 24 cm wide. First she worked 4 rows of knit stitches, then she switched to a checkerboard pattern with squares of 10 stitches wide by 14 rows high: 2 knit stitches for the selvedge, 10 knit, 10 purl, 10 knit, 10 purl, 10 knit, 2 knit stitches for the selvedge. She turned the scarf, then she worked 2 knit stitches for the selvedge, continued as established for the next 50 stitches (which is 10 purl, 10 knit, 10 purl, 10 knit, 10 purl), then 2 knit stitches for the selvedge. She did repeat these two rows 6 more times (that’s 12 more rows). Then she reversed the pattern: 2 knit stitches for the selvedge, 10 purl, 10 knit, 10 purl, 10 knit, 10 purl, 2 knit stitches for the selvedge, she turned the scarf, worked 2 knit stitches for the selvedge, continued as established (10 knit, 10 purl, 10 knit, 10 purl, 10 knit), worked 2 knit stitches for the selvedge, and repeated these 2 rows 6 more times. She kept doing this until she ran almost out of yarn, then finished with 4 rows of knit stitches and bound off. Tony’s scarf measures about 2,50 m!

This is the type of pattern that requires wet blocking if you want the scarf to look nice and the squares to stay square, so you’ll have to pin it while wet to your blocking mats to force it into shape. Mind you, there’s no need to go buy blocking mats just for this scarf: your yoga mat or anything similar will perfectly do (you already know we like the ones from Heid de Frenay)! When wet blocking you can use the squares in the scarf to decide where you place your pins: every square is supposed to be 4,5 by 4,5 cm.

The project is in everyone’s reach: there’s nothing more to it than knit, purl, cast on, bind off, some counting but not too much, and an amount of time and patience that entirely depends on your knitting speed.

If you prefer something other than Bio Merinos you could also use Bio Balance from BC Garn (half organic cotton and half organic wool), Cheeky Merino Joy from Rosy Green Wool (100% superfine merino in bright colours, machine washable) or Bio Love from Rosários4 (100% organic cotton).

A schematic view of the pattern would look like this:

Find the schema here in PDF format: Checkered Scarf.