Knit a Scarf with Bold Circles

May 17, 2024 by Sarah White Leave a Comment

I had kind of stopped sharing scarf knitting patterns for the summer, even though our Southern Hemisphere friends can still use them, but I will make an exception for this one, which I think maybe everyone should knit right now, regardless of the season where they live.

The Shanta Wrap from Pascuali Designs features big, bold circles on a contrasting background. The project is worked in garter stitch and uses the intarsia technique to make the color changes.

This one calls for sport weight yarn to make a shawl that measures 15 inches/38.1 cm wide and 60 inches or 152.4 cm wide. That’s already pretty big but you could try it with DK weight to make more of a shawl, or even with fingering weight to make a narrower scarf.

The main thing is that you really need two colors that contrast highly to make those circles pop. The designer uses their own Pascuali Suave yarn (available in Germany), which is a cotton yarn, though this would be great in wool for a warmer finish (and again if you want to make it wider to be a shawl, wool or alpaca would be a great choice).

You can find this project, which is available in English and German, on Ravelry.

If you’ve never done intarsia before it can be a little intimidating, but the good news is that this scarf uses large color sections and it doesn’t look like you would ever need more than three balls of yarn for a row. (With intarsia each block of color uses its own ball so you don’t carry the unused yarn across the back.)

If you need help with your intarsia technique, I wrote a post over on Our Daily Craft that covers the basics. It shows intarsia worked on a stockinette stitch with three balls of yarn, but the idea is the same when working with a garter stitch.

[Photo: Pascuali Designs]

Checked Snood a Simple Lesson in Intarsia

Add a Little Intarsia to Your Summer Top

Faux Intarsia

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Learn All About Ribbing (+ a Free Pattern to Try)

It might sound weird to you, but one of my favorite knitting stitch patterns is ribbing. I find it kind of fun to knit, because it feels mechanical after a while and I don’t really have to think about it, but it makes a texture that’s more interesting than stockinette stitch.

Over at Our Daily Craft I recently wrote a giant post all about knitting ribbing that includes most of what I know on the subject. There’s a fun variation on the cable cast on that is perfect for using with ribbing, tips on how to follow the stitch pattern, binding off in pattern and more.

I even talk about everyone’s least favorite part of knitting ribbing, which is what to do when you have to increase or decrease in ribbing (short answer: it’s going to mess up your pattern but it will also be OK).

I also share a few of my favorite ribbing patterns, because of course it doesn’t have to be knit 1, purl 1 or knit 2, purl 2 all the time. (In fact my favorite is probably 3×3. I find it super fun and love the texture of the fabric.)

You can check out the post all about ribbing here.

And if you’re ready to try an allover ribbed project yourself, check out my ribbed cowl knitting pattern. This one is fun because it starts out being knit flat and ends up in the round, so it opens up over your shoulder for easy wearing but is snuggly as a turtleneck at the top.

This one uses worsted weight yarn and is pretty quick and easy to knit. It’s a good one to try if you’ve never done a project in the round because you don’t have to worry about twisting the cast on since you’ll have already knit flat for several inches before you join. (Of course you could work the whole thing flat and make a seam where you want it to be closed, but knitting in the round is easier.)

Do you have a favorite rib stitch? I’d love to hear about it!

Practice Ribbing with this Hat and Mitt Set

Have You Tried This? Ribbing with No Purling

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