How To Knit A Scarf - Pattern 2

As the biting winter weather sets in for the long haul, it’s never been a better time to learn how to knit some warm wear. Learning how to knit a scarf is a great place to start honing your skills before moving on to more complicated patterns - after all, there are an endless amount of things you can knit.

What You’ll Need

Knitting is a thoroughly enjoyable and therapeutic pastime and, what’s more, you’ll get something practical out of it in the end! There are only a couple of vital things you need to begin:

- Pair of thick needles (to start with, the thicker the better. Anywhere between 10mm and 16mm diameter will be ideal, which is between US standard size 15 and 19.)

- A yarn of bulky wool (again, for your first time around the thicker the better.)

- A bit of patience. Learning how to knit a scarf takes a little time, but once you’ve mastered the basics you will be itching to take your hobby further and experiment.

Step 1 - Casting On

First of all, you’ll need to perform what’s knowing as ‘casting on’ - adding stitches which will determine the overall width of your scarf. If you’re using a thick yarn, which is easier to handle, around fifteen stitches should do the trick. We’re going to use around ten stitches on with a medium yarn just to demonstrate the physics of knitting.

To start, make a slipknot about two inches from the end of the yarn:

Holding a needle in your left hand, slip the newly formed loop over it and pull the end on the yarn side to tighten it.

This is technically your first stitch. How do you add more? Simple - create another loop, and slip it over the end of your needle.

Keep adding stitches, using your left hand to hold the needle and your right to feed the wool around it and back towards the yarn. Repeat this until you have the desired width.

Step 2 - Knitting Stitches

Now you have your stitches aligned on your left needle, it’s time to knit a scarf! Of course, there’s many stitch types to play around with, but perhaps the easiest is the knit stitch. Not the most imaginatively named, but it is a piece of cake to learn and a good starting point.

Assuming you’re right handed (obviously reverse all of these directions if the opposite is true) hold your stitched needle in the left hand and slide your other needle into the last loop as pictured above. Make sure the yarn is behind the point where the two needles intersect - you’ll see why in a bit.

Next, without moving anything manoeuvre yourself so that both needles are in your left hand forming an X. Holding the yarn in your right hand, wrap it around the tip of the right needle. Go counter-clockwise around the right needle, as such:

Once you’ve gotten to this stage, you need to pull the right needle out of the loop. Do so carefully, making sure the yarn doesn’t completely fall off the right needle. It may seem fiddly at first, but as with most things, practise makes perfect.

Just as you start to tighten the yarn and you clear the left needle, turn the tip of the right needle towards you and gently pull.

Pulling softly toward you with the right needle, what’ll result is an extra stitch on the left needle and leave you with a new one on the right as such:

Keep pulling gently on the stitch you’ve just created on the right needle and the old stitch (pictured above on the left needle) will transfer between the two. And that’s all there is to it - you’ve just knitted your first stitch!  

Step 3 - Knitting Rows

After completing the last step, you’ll essentially end up back at the beginning, with your row of stitches on the left needle and your new knitted stitch on the right.

Carry on knitting stitches to the right needle as per step two, slowly feeding the yarn through your right hand as you go. Eventually, you’ll end up with all of the stitches on the right needle.

Once you’ve knitted the whole row, it’s simply a case of switching the needles over and repeating. As you switch over a few times the scarf will slowly start to take shape:

This method of solely using the knit stitch to work through each row is known as a garter stitch, and can be used for making pretty much anything!

Step 4 - Casting Off

Once you’ve created a scarf of desired length, you’ll need to finish the knit in such a way that all your handiwork doesn’t unravel the moment you take it off the needle. So far you’ll have been using a thicker yarn and needles than the ones above which makes handling the knitting easier.

At the end of the scarf you’ll need to ‘cast’ or ’bind’ off. With all of your stitches on the left needle, add two to the right needle using the exact same method you’ve learned so far.

Once you’ve got two stitches on the right, use your left needle and slide it into the first stitch you just created.

Lift this stitch up and over the second stitch lower down and drop it back onto the right needle as such:

With this completed, add another stitch onto the right needle and repeat the process, using the left needle to pick up the new stitch and dropping it behind the stitch before it on the right needle. Keep going until all of your knitting is on the right needle, with only a single stitch left loose at the top.

Cut the yarn, leaving around six inches hanging. Pulling the final stitch loose enough to insert the remaining wool, feed it into the loop and tie it into a knot. Any leftover can be fed into the stitching to keep it hidden.

And that’s it you have now learnt how to make a scarf. If all went well, you should end up with a great scarf which you can wear or give away as a gift: