Well, there’s good news and bad news. The good news is that Tammy, a reader of this blog, recognized the correct stitch pattern on the scarf worn by Lucy in the episode of Elementary from last Sunday. She recognized it as an alternating stocking stitch, reverse stocking stitch pattern, the way it appears when done in the round. As a matter of fact, the thought struck her when she saw the Waves scarf I made and put up the pattern for here on this blog!
After seeing Tammy’s comment, I went back and scrutinized the scarf in the show, and discovered she was absolutely correct! Thanks Tammy! Unfortunately though, this brings about a few challenges when making the scarf. If I recreate the scarf the way it is made, the main challenge is that you have to make each strip flat, not in the round, as you have to weave them together later. *See solution A at the bottom of this post. When you make them flat, your edge stitches need to be seamed together later after the weaving. This gives an unsightly ridge. As a matter of fact, I re-watched the episode and there is a frame where this seam is very evident as Lucy takes off the scarf and hangs it. Here is a capture of that frame …
I am sure we could clean up the seam that is evident here and it could also be partially hid depending on how it’s worn, but I’d like to just avoid the issue altogether. With that in mind, I decided to go ahead and make the scarf in a 2×2 rib. I did do a bit of it in a 1×1 rib, but as I mentioned earlier, it looks a lot like stocking stitch from afar. So, I am going to let you in on the method I used to construct this scarf. You could just knit three strips, weave them together, join the ends and voila, there’s your scarf. Of course, you’d have an unsightly seam though.
I instead decided to make the seam as imperceivable as possible, so that meant a few technique changes. Thinking ahead, I will have to join each of the three strips after they have been woven together. I will probably want to graft these together, or at the very least, a three needle bind-off. In order to do this, I need to have live stitches at the beginning and at the end of each strip. It’s easy to have live stitches at the end of the strip, simply don’t cast them off and put them on a stitch holder. At the beginning is a different story though. You have a few options here, and my first thought was a provisional cast-on. While this works, it’s an advanced technique and I wanted to keep this simple to allow as many knitters the opportunity of knitting this as possible. So I used a little “trick” from my machine knitting days. I simply cast on with a waste yarn and knit a few rows in pattern. After I knit about 4 rows, I switched to the yarn I was going to use for the scarf and continued on.
I tried to cut a corner here and instead of doing this three times, I continued with one long strip and separated each section with a single row using a strong cotton. The idea was that this was to be a ravel cord, being that when it gets removed later, the sections would magically separate.
This does work, but again, more advanced than it has to be. You need to place stitch holders (I used a contrast white yarn for this) above and below the ravel cord so as not to lose the stitches when it gets removed. It’s better to repeat this process 3x, as you’ll save yourself a little work and/or frustration later. Here’s my 3 strips all joined with 1 row of ravel cord in between each section. . Again, I wouldn’t recommend this method, do three individual strips. It’s easier.
Once you have the three sections knit, you need to weave them together, and carefully align each section start with each section end. I found the easiest way to do this was put all three sections on a long needle, and then weave them in a braid. As long as you have enough weaves, don’t worry about the cohesion or lack there of for the time being.
The next important thing is to graft the ends together. You can either use the Kitchener stitch if you’re comfortable doing it over purl stitches, or use the 3 needle bind off. The latter will leave a small ridge, but it is very small indeed.
One last thing after you have grafted the ends together, you now need to “tack” the scarf in place at strategic locations so that it remains braided in the same manner. The one that Lucy is wearing was seamed together in one spot, thus leaving the ridge. If you seam the edges together in several spots for about 2 to 3 inches along, this should keep the braid in place nicely. This is also your opportunity to space out the braids in the manner you desire. Once you’ve done this, you’re done!
So the reason there isn’t a “pattern” for this yet is that I have gotten to the point where I’m going to graft the ends together. Unfortunately, I have realized that my strips are too short. 🙁 I used 2 shades of a red wool that I had, but unfortunately ran out of one of them. I am in the process of re-doing this in a lighter weight, natural color wool/alpaca blend. Once I do this and take a few pictures, that pattern will be produced. I’m sure you’re wanting to get started on this if you haven’t already though, so the above process should work well for you.
Here are the specs of the pattern that you can use as guidelines:
The Rib – I used a 2×2 rib, but a 3×2 would work nicely as well. It’s vital to have a selvedge stitch edge!
The red yarn I used was a chunky weight, on 5.5mm needles, but I think a worsted on 4.5mm gives a better look (that’s what the second one I’m doing is) for the stitch definition, and it will be more versatile and offer more opportunities to wear it. The chunky weight is very bulky and warm when wrapped around the neck.
The thickness of each strip is entirely up to you, but keep in mind that the thicker they are the bulkier it will be when you wrap it around your neck, and the longer you’ll have to make each strip in order to accommodate this. For the chunky yarn, I used 28 stitches (4″ wide) and made them 53″ long (250 rows). They need another 7″ to be comfortable. The worsted one is 4.5″ wide and will be 66″ long. I recommend using your row count to ensure each strip is the same length. It is much more accurate than measuring each strip.
The stitch pattern – (worked over 28 stitches) Row 1 – slip the first stitch knitwise, (K2, P2) to last stitch, knit last stitch. Row 2 – slip the first stitch purlwise, (P2,K2) to last stitch, purl the last stitch. Repeat these 2 rows to desired length. Again, you can modify the rib to your liking, or use a different texture altogether! Remember, cast on with a contrast waste yarn and do about four rows before starting with the yarn of your choice.
You can start knitting this scarf if you like, and I’ll go over the putting it together once I have the three pieces done. Kind of like a Knit-A-Long! There will be more coming!
Hugzzz 😎
P.S. * If you want to make this using the alternating stocking stitch/reverse stocking stitch pattern and do it in the round, you could do so but you would have to steek each strip so that it could be cut and woven/braided later. You would have to cast on somewhere in the vicinity of 250 – 300 stitches depending on your gauge, plus a few extra for the steeks.