Today, we finally do the math for the Ascot scarf. The calculator in this post will:

1. Compute the unknown values from Lesson 3’s “Fill in the Blank” pattern.
2. Compute the yardage requirements based on your design values and stitch gauge.
3. Explain how each calculation is performed.

The organization of this lesson assumes you have already read “Less…..

 

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Today’s design lessons includes to topics:

1. Deciding dimensions so your scarf “fits”.
2. Selecting the increase/decrease method.

Make your scarf “fit”.

I bet you rarely think of a scarf “fitting” or “not fitting”. After all, it’s not as if these are labeled by size in the store!

That said, you also know that scarves can be “too long”, “too short” , “too wide” or “too narrow”. Which is which depends on what sort of “neck thingie” you want to knit. If your into really long wide scarves, of coures you can make yours as long as Dr. Who’s which is looks to be three or four times body length. Below center, I am modeling a 6′ long, 4″ wide scarf. (It’s about 5′ long, between the ‘leaves’ that pull through the buttonholes.) My brother-in-law David is modeling a XX long, 6″ wide scarf.

Choosing the length and width for your scarf.

So what length do you want? Look at the image to the right. The key dimension is the length “N” for the “neck wrap” part of the scarf. We also need to select the width “w”. Later one, we can worry about the lenght of the leaves “L”.

So, how long should the length “N” be?

1. Using the ascot shape, you could pick a novelty yarn, knit a scarf with the neck wrap just equal to your neck diameter, make the neck wrap 3″ wide, pull the leaves through the buttonhole. You could wear this indoors and spice up your workday outfit. For this scarf, the value of N will be close to 14″ or 15″ for most women. Larger will droop a bit; smaller will choke you. The check, wrap a measuring tape around your neck. The value of width W=3″ or so.
2. You can also pick a thick chunky yarn, knit a medium length, W=6″ wide scarf for your favorite guy. This width will rise up and fold slightly– sort of like a generous turtleneck. If you are making it this large, I recommend an N=18″ length for the neck wrap part of the scarf. If it’s shorter, the 6″ wide scarf may feel constricting
3. You can pick a fluid fuzzy yarn, make a 6 foot long, 4″ wide scarf to wrap around your neck once, leaving room to fill in the opening of your coat. I find 4″ is just shorter than most people’s necks, so it keeps your full neck warm without rising too high or low over the neck. My scarf is 4″ wide and N=5 ft.

So, as you can see, we have many choices. If you are desinging, you are the one who chooses!

Selecting increases and decreases

In Lesson 1, we decided to organize our work by knitting from tip to tip. We also know that we will need to knit the two leaves — one at each end of the scarf. These leaves terminate in “points” making it easy to slide one leaf through a buttonhole, holding the scarf in place.

Looking at the shape of the leaves we can see we will cast on at the point of the first leaf and then increase stitches to widen it. For the second leaf we will need to decrease stitches. Ultimately, the charted directions will look like those shown below:

These two images above represent directions for the very first few rows an very last few rows of the scarf. If you don’t know how to read charts, don’t worry too much yet. The main thing to notice is that the grey area is “no stitch”. So, the area in between represents stitches of some sort or another. What you can see is that for one case, you start with 1 stitch at the bottom of the chart, and gradually, you have more stitches. In the other case, grey “no stitch area” surrounds an upward pointing triangle. You will decrease for that leaf.

Notice that in the image on the left (for the cast on) I have indicated the symbol “ML” (make 1 left), “MR” (make 1 right); these are increases. In the image on the right, I show “/” and “\”; these represent k2tog and ssl (slip-slip-knit); these are decreases.

We’ll now think about why I picked those types of increases and decreases.

There are zillion ways to increase and decrease; each method has a different decorative effect. Some methods of increasing involve yarnovers and leave little holes. Some methods like “knit, purl into 1 stitch” are pretty inconspicuous. Some methods like “M1R” and “M1L” create a slanting looking stitch. Also, you can increase or decrease at the edge of the work, or you can increase or decrease a few stitches away from the edge.

Each choice affects the way the “leaves” look near their outer edges.

Now, stop a minute: Remember that when we selected the “tip-to-tip” organization for knitting the scarf, we decided to increase for one leaf and decrease for the other leaf. If you picked a smooth yarn, these increase and decreases will likely be visible when you wear the scarf.

I bet you want the increases and decreases to look the similar on both leaves, right?

Now, consider the many zillions of ways to increase. Suppose you pick “yarn over”, knitting into the arn over on the next row. That method will a series of holes on the edge of the ‘cast on’ leaf. That’s very pretty–but now try to find a decrease method that creates holes. . . Nope. You can’t.

It turns out that if you want the two ends of the scarf to be similar, you can’t pick yarn over as the method to increase.

It turns out that if you want your two ends to look similar, it’s best to first think about the decreases first and then pick increases that look similar. If you look up methods, you will discover that the two most common decreases are “ssk and k2tog”. The “ssk” (slip knitwise, slip knitwise, knit two tog.) creates a left leaning decrease; these generally look nice near the right hand side of decreasing areas. So, I will use it there.

In the knitting chart to the right, this decrease in indicated by a left leaning line, as “\”. On the left hand side, we will use “k2tog” which results in a right leaning decrease, it’s indicated b a “/” in the image.

So, next, we are going to hunt for the simplest possible right and left leaning increases. These are the “MR” and “ML” (i.e. Make 1 right and Make 1 Left). Those are indicated with “MR” and “ML” in the chart. They will resemble a lot like “/” and “\” when you work these– though the match won’t be perfect.

Notice, when I created my chart, I made a design decision for you without explaining why: We are going to increase and decrease 1 stitch away from the edge. This permits the “pointiest” of leaves. If you want to do something else, we’ll discuss that in comments.

Today’s Summary

We’ve discussed selecting your scarf length and width. For ‘homework’ I suggest you go to your clost (or the store) with a tape measure and check out the length and width of a number of scarves; try each on. Decide what lenghts you find most comfortable. Then pick the length and width for your design.

After that, if you aren’t familiar with M1L, M1R, SSK or k2Tog, practice those. I can point you to blog posts showing these methods– but they are in all learn to knit books.

Then come back for Lesson 3! Remember that Lesson 4 will explain how to compute your scarf, and eventually, I will post a calculator that compute directions and estimates yarn requirements for your specific scarf. Those will be available by subscription only. To subscribe to the blog and access the full blog content, Click to subscribe To The Knitting Fiend: Premium.

In this lesson, we well focus on some general features of a design. Many of you are aware that I have written lots of knitting calculators. So, you are likely to think that design involves calculating things. This is true, to some extent. However, it is also untrue. Because the real design work happens before you calculate anything! The real design work involves making aesthetic choices. Yes, before calculating, we need to decide what our scarf will look like! We also need to select the general organization for your knitting. Calculations (i.e. “the math”) can wait until later.

Aesthetics: What do we want our scarf to look like.

So, today we’ll discuss the aesthetic of the scarf. Scarves or more generally “neck thingies”, can look like anything. Fortunately, for the sake of discussion, we have constrained the choice a little: We are making an ascot scarf. Because we want this to be a simple project, the stitch patterns are going to be garter stitch and ribbing. Now, let’s look at other features of the scarf.

Geometric features of the ascot scarf:

• The leaves: These are the pointy ends of the scarf. The leaves are knit in garter stitch and need to be just long enough to fit through the button hole and drape nicely.
• The buttonholes. The buttonholes are narrow, knit in ribbbing, and should be just long enough to permit the leaves to pass through.
• The neckwrap. The neck wrap is knit in garter stitch. Other than that, you can go wild on this part. The neck wrap can be just short enough to wrap tightly around your neck, or long enough to wrap several time. It can be narrow or wide. This is entirely up to you.

Given these features, we designers need to ask ourselves:

1. How long should the buttonhole be?
2. How long should the ‘the leaf’ be?
3. How long do we want the neck wrap to be?
4. How wide do we want the neck wrap to be?

Do you think there are “correct” answers to these questions? Well, there are some clearly wrong answers. Some questions have answered based on function: The button hole should be long enough to let the leaf slip through, but short enough to hold it snugly.

However, the length of the leaf and the length of the scarf have a vast range of possible “right” answers.

For adults, I’ve made scarves with neckwraps as short as 15″ and as long as 5 ft. I’ve made them 4″ to 6″ wide. The example shown is my brother-in-law’s scarf. It’s 18″ long and 6″ wide. Knit from chunky yarn, this is perfect to fill in the gap for a man’s dressy overcoat. (This is how David wear it.)

How do you decide the correct answers for your scarf? We’ll discuss these specific choices in lesson 2!

Yarn choice decisions

We know come to the fun part. What yarn should we use?

I know we all want to think of beauty first, but we need to hold off a bit. It’s best to first think of functional features. So, lets go in order:

1. This is worn against the neck. The yarn needs to be soft.
2. Does this scarf need to be durable? Scarves tend to be worn daily in winter; on the other hand, they just drape around the neck. For kids, durability is probably important; adults could use delicate cashmere!
3. Machine washable? Maybe or maybe not. This depends on who is being given the scarf. On the one hand, I don’t like to resort to stereotypes, but you are giving this to your college age nephew who is studying engineering, I would strongly advise the scarf be machine washable. On the other hand, if you are giving it to a 50 year old lady who lunches who enjoys hand laundering her silk lingerie, then hand wash only is fine.
4. How thick should the yarn be? Generally, this is entirely up to you! But because this is a design lesson, I’m going to tell you to pick yarn that knits at 4 stitches or fewer stitches an inch. (The reason is that you want to knit up the project quickly so you can focus on the design part of the lesson.)
5. What do I want the yarn to look like? Do you want fuzzy? Smooth? Novelty? For now, pick whatever you like provided it’s a yarn you feel comfortable knitting. Most often, I see ascot scarves knit in smooth worsted yarns or soft fuzzy yarns and advice that. But if you want to be adventurous, pick something else. But, before selecting, ideally, find out if you can see some of the yarn knit up and decide if you think it looks pretty when knit in garter stitch.

Deciding on general organization for knitting

1. Tip to tip: Cast on, work a leaf, work a button hole, work neck wrap, work a button hole, bind off?
2. Center out: Provisional cast on at center, work1/2 neck wrap, work a buttonhole, work a leaf, bind off. Pick up stitches from provisional cast on, repeat as for first half of scarf.
3. Tip to center: Cast on, knit a leaf, work a buttonhole, knit 1/2 neckwrap. Put stitches on stitch holder. Repeat. Graft two pieces together.

So which one do we pick?

Each method has advantages and disadvantages. For example, the third method is ideal if you want to create the longest possible scarf while using up all your yarn. You can just knit the neck wrap until you only have enough yarn to graft. Graft the two pieces together, and that’s the longest scarf you could have knit! But there is a big disadvantage: Beginners usually don’t know how to graft, plus grafting garter stitch is more difficult than grafting stockinette. Even many advanced knitters avoid grafting- so much so you rarely see grafting in commercial patterns!

Notice that the second method involves “provisional cast on”. This is easy to do, but it’s best to avoid in a beginner pattern. Once again: this is a technique many advanced knitters also avoid.

So, we are left with method 1: working “tip to tip”.

The disadvantage of this method is that you will yarn left over (unlike with method 3) and you must work bot decreases and increases. Since you want both ends to look similar, this reduces the number of choices for increases and decreases. But since we want simple pattern, we are going to organize the knitting this way.

Summary

That’s the end of today’s lesson. We will move on to calculations next. What you need to do for homework is:

1. Select a type of yarn. (Visit your LYS, look on ebay, look through your stash. For now, budget about 100-150 grams which is more than enough for nearly any length scarf. (Short narrow scarves will take much less.) We’ll have a better estimate later when you decide on the length and width, and know your stitch gauge.

In lesson 2, we’ll discuss how to select the length and width of your scarf and we will select the method of increasing and decreasing. So, still no math. The math starts in lesson 3, which will be accessible to subscribers only. You’ll love the lessons, so Click to Subscribe to The Knitting Fiend: Premium.

Ascot scarfs are retro-classics your grandmother made.  They are a great fashion choice for manly men, girly-girls and kids!   They are also an ideal garment to use for a beginner design lesson.

Why is it perfect?

Because these scarves both just simple enough and just complicated enough to teach the very most basic shaping and styling lessons.  So, guess what? I’m going to run an introductory “how to design” lesson using this scarf. To

The beginner lesson focus on creating a pattern that can be knit by an advance beginner knitter. So, if you are an advanced beginner knitter, you can start learning how to design. What if you are a skilled knitter who doesn’t know how to design? Well, you too will benefit from this lesson series by accumulating knowledge you need later on when you want to design complicated patterns.

What if you don’t really want to design your own stuff? Well, even knitters who don’t plan to design will find that understanding the process of design will help them better understand published patterns and also permit them to “tweak” patterns to adapt them to their own needs.

Syllabus

The syllabus for this course is:

1. Lesson 1: Select a general organization for our work and focus on aesthetic choices.
2. Lesson 2 : Focus on decorative effects.  Selecting yarn, increase/decrease methods, stitch pattern selections and tools you will need.
3. Lesson 3: Creating template for directions with “fill in the blank spaces” for numerical values.
4. Lesson 4: Focus on shaping: Computing the shaping directions.
5. Lesson 5: Estimating yarn requirements.
6. Lesson 6: Writing up your knitting directions.
7. Lesson 7: Knitting from your directions. Refine directions.
8. Lesson 8: Bragging about your scarf.

Schedule

The schedule is being developed. As I schedule posts, I will indicate the upcoming dates on the calendar on our lesson site about page. (Today, is Nov. 23. I’ve written the first three lessons, but I’m going post them over the course of a few days. That way, I’ll always be a few days ahead of the subscribers.)

Materials

Because this is a design lesson, it’s impossible to describe the exact materials you will need.  However, if you make the most likely design choices you will need:

• Roughly 100 grams of chunky or heavy worsted yarn for single wrap scarf that wraps once around your neck.
• A set of needles of the diameter recommended on the ball-band. This is used to knit garter stitch.  These can be straight or circular, as you prefer.
• Optional: A set of needles one or two diameter sizes smaller than recommended on the ball-band.  These are used to knit the ribbing.  You could also use the larger needles if you prefer.
• A tapestry needle to weave in ends when you are finished.
• A tapestry needles and some left over yarn to use as a stitch holder, or an honest to goodness stitch holder, or a double pointed needle and some rubber bands. (These are used a stitch holders. )

Subscribe to the lesson

The first & second lessons will be free. Access to later lesson will be available to visitors who subscribe to the blog.

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