Knit Yourself an Awesome Plaid Scarf

Here’s another fun knitting technique to add to your resolutions list (as if you need more of those, right?).

Knitting plaid looks really complicated, and I suppose it could be, but there are lots of tricks you can use to make it a lot easier. Such as not actually knitting it all.

This plaid scarf pattern from Stitches N Scraps shows you how. The scarf body is worked in stripes, so you’re only working with one color on each row.

The vertical lines of the plaid are worked in later, using slip stitch crochet. It’s really simple even if you don’t know how to crochet, I promise.

This is such a lovely scarf, great for ladies and guys, and though it’s rated intermediate it is really not that difficult, and it looks really impressive.

Have you ever knit plaid? I’d love to know how it went for you. Did you use this technique or make it a different way?

[Photo via Stitches N Scraps.]

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Linen stitch is one of my favorite knitting stitch patterns that, every time I use it in a project, I think about how I don’t use it often enough.

It’s an easy stitch to make, with slip stitches done with the yarn held to the front of the work on the right/front side and to the back on the wrong/back side, which makes the strand of yarn a visible part of the pattern.

It also makes a fabric that is thick and looks kind of like a woven fabric.

I recently used linen stitch to make a double-thick pot holder, which I worked in a kind of interesting way. I didn’t want to have to do any sewing on the project, so I started it from a crochet cast on and picked up stitches from the side of the cast on to make the hot pad all in one piece in the round with the edge sealed.

This requires working on two circular needles, which is another technique I don’t use that often and am always reminded how much I like it when I do.

The combination of double thickness and the stitch pattern makes for a hot pad that’s already pretty thick, but I also added a bit of old towel to the inside before I closed up the end to make it super thick and extra protective for your surfaces.

I found the engineering challenge of this construction method to be a lot of fun, but you could also just knit it as a tube (casting on twice as many stitches as I did) and sew up the ends by hand when the knitting is done. Either way you’ve got a useful and pretty addition to your kitchen, whether you work it in a solid color, stripes or as a stash busting project will all your cotton odd balls.

You can grab the pattern over at Our Daily Craft, or check it out on Ravelry.

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