Knit a Scarf with a Dragon’s Tail

The Dragon’s Tale scarf from Nim Teasdale is just so much fun I had to share it. It’s a crescent-shaped scarf with lace detailing along one side to look like scales, and the tips of the scarf are made to look like the dragon’s head and tail, respectively. Complete with safety eyes, though of course you could use buttons or even just embroider French knots or x shapes if you’d rather.

The head is shaped with cables, and both the cables and the lace are charted, but the full pattern is also written out if you prefer to work that way. There’s just one increase and one decrease in each row of the border, so it’s a pretty simple introduction to lace knitting if you haven’t tried it before. The edge also has an integrated I-cord border to give it more definition.

The head can be worked flat or in the round if you want to give it a little more realistic of a look.

And if you don’t want to use the head and tail at all, you can just make a pretty scarf with a wave and some dragon scales if you’d rather.

Both the width and the length of the pattern are adjustable, and it calls for DK weight yarn but you could also use worsted if you have some handy.

This pattern was originally released in 2014 and you can find the old pattern with 250 projects to show you what it looks like in all kinds of yarns on Ravelry. (There’s a really great rainbow version in there, for example.)

The new pattern has updated charts and is also available on Ravelry. There’s also a shawl version if you’d rather make it bigger and more reminiscent of dargon wings.

I do love the creativity of knitters and am glad this one was refreshed so it got on my radar this time around!

[Photo: Nim Teasdale]

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I feel like I haven’t shared many knitting machine patterns lately, probably because I haven’t been using my knitting machines much lately. (I finally made space for them to live on the bookshelf in my office, and now that they have a “place” it’s almost like I forgot they existed for a while.)

But I did recently make a little cat bed, that surely would work for a small dog, too.

This one uses two different sizes of knitting machine: a larger one (it could be any in the 40-48 needle range) and a 22 pin.

The larger machine is used in flat panel mode to make the bottom pillow like part of the bed, while the smaller machine makes a long tube that is used around the edges as the sort of walls of the cat bed.

For stuffing I used a bit of leftover quilt batting for the pillow, and some cut up old T-shirts for the tube.

You can use any worsted weight yarn you like (I used two colors of Big Twist Pound+, which comes in huge skeins that weigh more than a pound). Acrylic or cotton yarn is nice for washablity, but you’ll be cranking for a while so make sure you use a yarn your machine likes so it’s not too much of a struggle.

You can grab the pattern for this cat bed over at Our Daily Craft. I’m sorry to report the pictured is as close as a cat has gotten to it so far, but maybe your cats like to be cozy more than mine do?

If you’re looking for more options for cute handmade places for your cats and little dogs to rest, check out this roundup of knit pet beds. I still want to knit one by hand but the machine version was definitely a faster option (especially good since my cats are ungrateful).

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