Knit a Scarf with Bold Circles

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]

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Faux Intarsia

Getting ready for back to school makes me think about pencil crafts, so let’s take a look at some pencil themed knitting patterns!

I recently made a pencil on a circular knitting machine, and it was a fun, quick, easy project that uses little bits of leftover yarn (and if you don’t have yellow you can make it a colored pencil using whatever color’s your favorite). And if you want to make a bigger version check out this pattern from Orange Olive Road on Etsy.

If you want to knit a pencil pillow by hand, check out Sketchy, available on Ravelry from Shana S. Cohen. This one uses worsted weight yarn and has two size options and the choice to make a pencil with an eraser or a colored pencil.

Pencil scarves seem to be the most popular kind of pencil knitting pattern, and there are lot of cute ones. This one from Cosy Craft UK mostly uses garter stitch, with some welts to add texture and what looks like an I-cord edging. It calls for DK weight yarn.

If you want to go all garter stitch try this version from Emsley Co Creations, which uses five colors of DK weight yarn and just a little shaping to make the point of the pencil.

There’s also this fun, mostly stockinette so it looks like it curls a bit, pencil pattern that looks like it’s worked in chunky yarn from Little Knits Studio. This one uses just a little garter stitch and easy shaping for the point.

If you don’t want a pencil scarf, how about some pencil socks? The No. 2 Pencil Socks from The Yarn Enabler are available from Ravelry and use five colors of sock yarn. They feature wide ribs to mimic the texture of a pencil and have options to be worked from the top down or the toe up.

Needs Sharpening by Alexander Walker is a free pattern on Ravelry that uses five colors of sock yarn to make a sort of shortie sock. The little bit of black at the tips of the toes inspired the name. These, too, can be worked in either direction and are available in three sizes.

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