Use Your Stash to Make Loop Scarves

I’ve recently been playing more with my Sentro knitting machine, and my favorite thing to make right now is loop scarves. Because the easiest thing to make on one of these machines is a tube, you can just crank out a bunch of knitting and sew the ends together and you’ve got a great looking and useful project.

If you’re a knitter and you know how to graft, this is even easier because you can just put all the stitches on needles and graft them together as if you were finishing a giant sock.

Of course you can make loop scarves on your knitting needles, too, if you don’t happen to have a circular knitting machine. Just cast on a comfortable number of stitches for working in the round and knit as long as you want. A provisional cast on makes it easier to finish because you can graft with live stitches on both ends, but you can also bind off and just sew the ends together.

I decided this was going to be my charity knitting project because it’s faster than knitting by hand, and also an easy way to use up stash. I’m ending up with a lot of color blocked loop scarves as I use up leftovers from other projects, but it’s fun and easy and a great way to help people keep warm in season.

I love loop scarves because you can more easily loop them around your neck and it stays where you put it, but you could make non-loop scarves in the same way, just sew the ends of the loop closed rather than to each other.

You can find my pattern for a loop scarf on the Sentro (or any other circular knitting machine, of course!) over on Our Daily Craft. I have a 40-pin machine but of course you can do this same thing with whatever machine you have.

If you have a circular knitting machine I’d love to know what you’re making with it!

[Photo: Our Daily Craft]

Sentro Knitting Machine Review

Fall will be here before we know it, and that means there are holidays coming right behind where we might be entertaining at home. It’s always fun to have a hand knit touch in your home for other people to see, and if you’re going to be in the kitchen all day you might as well have some nice knit dish cloths to use.

I love this little plaid hand towel from Darling Jadore. Use a little bit of leftover cotton yarn from another project for the plaid portion. It looks like the horizontal stripes are worked as you knit and the vertical stripes are done with duplicate stitch, making this a quick and easy project even newer knitters can make.

Combine garter stitch and an easy eyelet pattern worked sideways to make the Annette Dish Towel from Cluck Cluck Boots, which is meant to be reminiscent of flour sack towels. It calls for DK weight yarn and you can work it in one color or two (or even three!).

Add a little more texture with this set of kitchen towels from Whileberry Creative. They’re mostly worked in garter stitch with borders in easy knit/purl patterns, and you can work them in sport or worsted weight yarn.

Two of Wands Shop has another cute allover knit and purl pattern they call the Seersucker Textured Tea Towel. It’s an easy repeating pattern worked in worsted weight yarn, and there’s a chart in the pattern you can use, but don’t have to, if you want to practice knitting from a chart.

The Classic Cloth dish towel from Handmade Home by Connie is another one that can use a little leftover yarn in a contrasting color, or you could color block it our use stripes throughout the pattern. This one uses worsted weight yarn and another easy repeating knit purl stitch pattern.

If you like to hang your towel on the oven handle or elsewhere but it’s always falling off, try the Stay Put kitchen towel from Fancy Step Knits. This project is worked in garter stitch and includes a hole partway through so you can pull the towel through itself over a rod or handle. Stripes are optional but a nice addition.

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