This is part 6 in a 12 part series highlighting designs from our 12 Days of Winter 2018 Collection.
My number one goal when designing a scarf is to make it look good on both sides. This can be quite challenging! Many/most cables have a definite unpleasant look to their wrong sided rows. Fair isle in a scarf is better done in the round because A) curling and B) floats. But simple knit/purl texture can be very nice on a scarf, and easy to work, too.
Echo Scarf (pattern link) is knit in Dona. Scrummy, scrumptious, buttery, and soft with amazing stitch definition: Dona. This scarf features a generous amount of ribbing at each end that flows directly into the texture and reversible cable patterning on the body of the scarf.
It may be difficult to tell from the photos, but the main stitch pattern is only an 8 row repeat. The patterning is also shown in the pattern in chart form and also written text. I am 100% a chart person, but I know that some knitters prefer text because their brains don’t always “click” with the way charts are presented. I’ll never pass up an opportunity to talk about chart reading because I believe they are so much easier (once you get the hang of them) to follow at a glance.
To illustrate, I’ve highlighted a few sections of the actual scarf below that correspond to the chart.
A blank square means to knit on the right side and purl on the wrong side, and represents stockinette stitch. A square with a dot inside it means to purl on the right side and knit on the wrong side, and represents reverse stockinette stitch.
The squares are visually conveying what the actual piece of knitting will look like. The blank squares which are stockinette look plain and smooth, just as they do in the finished piece. So the idea is that when you look at the chart and see this arrangement of symbols, you can know what stitches come next just at a glance.
As a reminder, whether you’re a chart or a word person, this pattern still has you covered. Remember, you can find Series 2 of the 12 Days of Winter Kit patterns on Ravelry.
