Time for The Red Scarf Project Again

I’ve been a follower of the Red Scarf Project for years. This program, a part of Foster Care to Success, sends care packages that include red scarves to college students who have been in the foster care system on Valentine’s Day. It’s a sweet little reminder that someone cares about them and is thinking about them.

When I first heard about it, the project was pretty small. But it’s so big now that they only accept scarves for part of the year, and the time has come to start sending in your scarves if you want to take part in the program next year.

The project requirements are for knit or crocheted scarves that measure about 60 inches long and 5 to 8 inches wide. They’re for young adults of both genders, so keep that in mind when designing. They also should have red in them in some way, but you can choose the shade.

Scarves are only accepted between now and December 15, so get to knitting if you’re moved to.

One of my patterns, the Basketweave Scarf, is featured in their suggested patterns, but I actually knit a similar one, the 4×4 woven scarf, which I sent in to the project many years ago.

Next Pattern:

As I write this, it’s probably time to start thinking about winter knitting if you haven’t already. And it’s definitely time to think about gift knitting if you have any of that you plan to do for the holidays.

The Dreamy Waves Scarf from Knit Picks, designed by Stacey Winklepleck, would be a great project to go in either category.

It uses two different multicolored yarns and a simple repeating wave pattern to make a project that looks a lot more complicated and dramatic than it is. The gradient look happens naturally just by switching which yarn you’re knitting with.

This pattern uses worsted weight yarn so it’s a pretty quick project even though a scarf is large and this one is pretty wide. It measures 8.5 inches (21.5 cm) wide and 63 inches or 120 cm long. Of course you can make it longer or shorter as you like. As written it takes one ball of each color so it’s a pretty economical project, too.

It’s rated for intermediate knitters but if you know how to do various increases and decreases you’ll be all set. The pattern uses knit 2 together, make 1 left and right, centered double decrease and slip slip knit. All of the stitches are explained in a glossary in the pattern so even if you haven’t done all of them it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out.

The pattern also includes tons of options for different colorways in yarn that Knit Picks sells, so you can see how different combinations knit up before you buy the yarn. That’s such a great idea!

Of course if you already have two multicolored yarns with long color runs on hand, you can absolutely use them, too. It might also be fun, but would give you a totally different look, to use a solid color and a bunch of scraps or one multicolored yarn to see how the different colors play together. So many options!

You can grab this free pattern and check out all the color options at Knit Picks.

[Photo: Knit Picks]

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Comments

Becky says
September 23, 2024 at 4:53 pm
Where do we send the red scarves knitted for the RED SCARF PROJECT?
Sarah White says
September 24, 2024 at 4:02 pm
There’s a PDF with the address on this page https://www.fc2success.org/programsmentoring-and-support/red-scarf-project/ but I don’t know that it’s been updated recently. You might try emailing to make sure that’s still correct.

Next Pattern:

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