Review: Quick Knitted Scarves

I enjoy little pattern collections that don’t include a lot of knitting instruction but do offer lots of ideas about how to make a particular kind of project.

Quick Knitted Scarves, complied by Amy Palmer and published under the Craft Tree imprint from Interweave, is a large-sized booklet containing 18 patterns for a wide variety of scarves (as well as a shawl and a head scarf).

Most of the projects use allover repeating stitch patterns that are pretty easy to memorize, so there are great projects here for newer knitters. But I don’t want you to think these scarves are plain, either. There are some really fun, dramatic projects here, large scale scarves and fun techniques you might not have tried before.

One of the most interesting ones to me is the Pooling Colors Scarf by Lori Gayle, which involves deliberately knitting with a space-dyed yarn so that the colors pool into stripes. There’s also a fun shaded scarf worked in a simple lacy stitch (the Spectrum Scarf by Eunny Jang) and the Wobble Scarf by Michaela Moore, which uses short rows and asymmetrical shaping to break up the colors of a highly variegated yarn.

There are also simple stripes, chevrons, Moss Stitch, a Garter Stitch triangular shawl knit with two different sized needles, even a striped scarf with knit fringe.

If you’re a fan of scarves, this is a great one to check out.

[Photo via Interweave.]

I guess I must have had this pattern on my mind, because I had chosen this log cabin blanket recipe to write about, promptly forgot about it and a couple of weeks later started knitting a log cabin blanket using all my pink yarn.

It might stay pink if it makes it to baby blanket sized, or I might add in some pastel green and blue, too, to make a bigger blanket. We’ll see. I’m also holding several strands of yarn together to make a kind of bulky yarn, which means it’s deeply satisfying how much yarn is used even as the project is still relatively small.

In Kristen Finlay’s version, DK weight yarn scraps (or fingering/sock yarn held double) are used to make a simple scrappy log cabin blanket that’s lighter weight than my version. Log cabin is a great technique for knitters of any skill level because it’s worked in garter stitch. The only not completely basic technique you need for log cabin knitting is picking up stitches.

If you’ve never worked a log cabin knitting project before, this is a good introduction, and it is really nice to use all your yarn scraps in one big project you’ll use for years to come.

If you use a lot of DK weight yarn you can keep building on it whenever you finish a project, or if you use more worsted weight you can do the same thing with it, it will just be a little bigger starting out than the pattern calls for. How big it gets is totally up to you.

I have really been enjoying working on my log cabin project, and it’s my current sitting at my desk and need a break knit (do you have one of those or is it just me?).

Ready to start your own log cabin blanket knitting project? You can grab the free pattern from Kristen Finlay on Ravelry.

Need more log cabin inspiration? Check out more log cabin knitting patterns.

[Photo: Kristen Finlay]

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