Three part infinity scarf (pattern), first two parts

This infinity scarf came about kind of by accident – it was one of those occasions when I happened to be out shopping, happened to come across some irresistible yarn, accidentally bought it, and then had nothing to make with it. I did what I always do, which is scour ravelry to find something to do with it, but came up short. I knew I wanted something with blocks of colour, because I loved the three colours and whilst I loved them together I didn’t want them to merge – so not stripes, more big areas of colour. I decided to basically make a mini scarf out of each, but not sewing them together (because that would not be fun – the less sewing the better).

My yarn is called Pisa and it’s from Manor which is a local shop here in Switzerland. It’s a 1 ply yarn, soft and a bit fluffy, 50% wool, 50% acrylic. It knits with 5.5mm to 6mm needles and has 80m in 50g of yarn. I’ve got 2 balls of each colour – mustard, pale pink and teal. Because this is just a scarf, gauge isn’t that important, so if you have something close to the specs of the Manor pisa it’ll be fine. I think something like the Malabrigo worsted is quite similar in terms of look and feel.

Scroll on down to the bottom if you just want the pattern basics in short hand, read on if you want to read my tips and progress on the scarf.

Introduction
This is an infinity scarf (a loop scarf) with three sections of different patterns, each pattern is really easy, but intentionally very different. Part 1 is a simple basket weave, part 2 features a giant cable in the middle, part 3 is a simple lace leaf pattern. If you like one of these patterns better than the other, go ahead and make the whole scarf with one pattern, or one colour, or whatever you like – variations are easily possible!

I’m working with 5mm needles to give a slightly denser fabric than if I used the recommended size on the label.

In mustard, cast on 48 stitches and knit two rows.

Part 1 (basket weave)
In mustard make a basket weave stitch as follows:
R1 – R4: slip 1, k3, *p4, k4 then repeat from * until the last 4 stitches, p4
R5 – R8: slip 1, p3, *k4, p4 then repeat from * until the last 4 stitches, k4
basically we are making blocks of stocking stitch and reverse stocking stitch 4 stitches wide here and after 4 rows we switch them over.
The slipped stitch at the beginning just makes the edges neater – throughout the pattern I always slip my stitches purlwise, with the yarn in the front if the next stitch is a purl and the yarn in the back if the next stitch is a knit.

Then repeat rows 1 to 8 until you are almost out of yarn, finishing at either a R4 or R8. You need to have enough yarn to do the transition to the next section – or just do it in the next colour if you prefer.

To work out if you have enough yarn left to do the next part (or always if you have to do a border at the end of your work) wrap the yarn around the needle the same number of times as you have stitches. So in the transition we have 48 stitches on the first row, and then 56 on the second row so if you can wrap the yarn around the needle 104 times then you will have enough yarn to do the transition in mustard.

Transition to part 2
In mustard (or pink):
R1: sl1, knit
R2: sl1, k6, m1, *k5, m1, repeat from * until you have 6 stitches left, k6
In the second row we are increasing by 8 stitches, so that in part 2, where there are cables, we will end up with the same width of scarf. If we didn’t do that then our scarf would be narrower in part 2, because the cable basically acts like a pleat or fold.
Because 48 doesn’t divide by 9 the increases aren’t completely evenly spaced across the row, we’ll have a 6 and a 7 stitch part at each end and then 5 stitches between the rest of the increases.
You should now have 56 stitches.

Part 2 (cables)
In pink:
R1: sl1, knit
R2 (WS): sl1, k4, p5, k10, p16, k10, p5, k5
R3 (RS): sl1, knit
repeat R2 and R3 until you get to the 10th row, then do a cable row as follows:
Cable row (RS): sl1, k19, c16f, k20
Then repeat R2 and R3 until you get to row 30, then do a cable row, then R2 and R3, cable on row 5o, and so on, cabling on the 20th row after the last one (so cable on row 70, 90, 110 etc.) until you are almost out of yarn, finishing 10 rows after a cable (you should have just finished a row on the RS, the next row in the transition should be on the WS).

c16f means “cable 16 forward” – slip 8 stitches onto a cable needle and hold it in front of the work, knit 8 stitches from the regular needle, then knit 8 from the cable needle.

In this section you have the cables in the middle 16 stitches, then on each side of the cables there is a garter stitch section, a stripe of stocking stitch and a garter stitch border. I put a locking stitch marker into one of the stitches on the cable row so that I can count 20 rows after that for the next cable row – because the yarn is quite chunky it’s easy to just count the V’s in the stocking stitch section so that’s where I put my marker.

With hindsight I think I might change this section if I did it again – as after blocking I wasn’t so keen on the “tramlines” on the sides. I think I would either keep it simple with just a garter stitch on either side of the central cable section (so skip the stocking stitch parts and just make these also plain knitted), or I would add another cable into those two parts.

Transition to part 3
In pink (or teal)
R1: Knit
R2: sl1, k5, k2tog, *k4, k2tog, repeat from * until you have 6 stitches left, k6 (48 st)
We need to decrease 8 stitches after the cables to get back to the original width of the scarf.

Part 3 (lace)
Part 3 is here.