travel buddy scarf

I never leave the house without my knitting. You never know when you'll get stuck waiting someplace, and I'd rather knit than stare at my phone. I like to have three projects going at any given time - something big, like a sweater, that I only work on at home, something random, like the giant crocheted "fence doily" I'm working on this week (you'll see it later), and always a small, easy, memorizable, one-skein scarf. That's the one I take along wherever I go, whether it's coffee in town, happy hour in Astoria, or a road trip where I know I need something to keep me busy in the passenger seat (or I become a very unpleasant copilot.)

My favorite scarf/shawl to take along for the ride is based on the lovely Chale Facile, by Emilie Marechal. It's free on Ravelry! I love how easy it is to make, and how absolutely wearable it is. I usually make it with fingering weight sock yarn on size 6 needles, but you can use any yarn and needles you have. One skein is usually enough, but if I have two, I sometimes make an extra big scarf and add lace or fringe at the bottom edge.


In this photo, the two on the left are mine. I wear them all the time, sometimes together if it's really cold outside. The two bright ones second from the left have bits of eyelet worked in. They'll be for sale one of these days, once I get some kind of shop system worked out. The green and lavender one is made with some gorgeous yarn my sis-in-law brought me from Italy, and it has a a wide band of crocheted lace at the bottom. The far right rainbow is a bulky-ish Peruvian cotton, and I made it to wear to Pride festivities we're attending in June. It's almost always scarf season in the Pacific Northwest, but I went with cotton in case it happens to warm up by then.

My basic pattern for all of these has a slight variation from the original design. It's a two-row repeat, and even though I carry around a little slip of paper with printed directions, it's pretty well imprinted in my brain by now. I've written it out for you without abbreviations, in case you're new to knitting and need all the words. If you want a nice printable PDF, visit the Ravelry link above.

Travel Buddy Scarf

Cast on 3 stitches
Row 1: knit front and back, knit to the last two stitches, knit two together.
Row 2: knit to the last two stitches, yarn over knit one (this adds an increase and a nice eyelet hole), knit the last stitch.

Repeat rows 1 and 2 until your yarn is almost gone, and finish with a stretchy bind off.



Comments

  1. I MUST have a project with me too! The one I’m doing now with my skein of unicorn cake is https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/clapo-ktus. Easy to memorize too!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oooh! I like that one! I’ll try it!

    ReplyDelete

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