The pattern for the modular knitted scarf
About 10 years ago I made a vest for myself and the pattern for the vest used the modular knitting technique. It was very interesting to work with this technique and I made a mental note for myself, to make something else later. Time passed, and in 2018 I bought a couple of balls of beautiful variegated yarn, that spoke to me, it needs to become something in modular technique, so I made a scarf.
Time passed again and when I started publishing patterns in 2020, I definitely wanted to add the modular project to my design portfolio. I recreated the scarf again, just used a different yarn (the previous one was already discontinued), and used a new sample for fresh pictures and photo tutorials.
Before I start talking all about the pattern itself, let’s dive a little bit into the technique. What is actually modular knitting? It’s a technique that creates knitted fabric out of several modules or knitted elements. But you don’t need to finish individual pieces and then sew them together (who needs all these loose ends, right?). With modular knitting, the elements are joined by picking up stitches from one of the edges of the previous element. So, you build your project one by one element and connect them to each other as you progress with the project.
Individual elements can be different shapes, squares for example (maybe you heard about mitered squares, it’s one of the possibilities), or rectangles, rhombi, triangles, etc.
The pattern Reptile Scale Scarf uses triangle elements. An interesting thing, when triangle elements are connecting to each other, they form shell shapes that are reminiscent of reptile scales. That is how the name of the pattern was born.
Each element is knitted with a garter stitch, not even one purl stitch is required for this project.
The pattern describes specific numbers of elements that are used to make a specific size of the scarf (if you follow the gauge exactly) but you can always customize your project. You can make it longer/shorter by changing the number of elements in one level, or make it wider/narrower by changing the number of levels.
I think this is a great pattern for in-between projects or on-the-go knitting, you can work on only one module and then put it aside for a while and pick it up later to continue. You'll need to remember only how to do one element in garter stitch, and this is easy.
Okay, what else do you need to know to dive into the project using the Reptile Scale Scarf pattern?
You need to know how to do a knit stitch, do simple decreases (K2tog, Ssk), pick up stitches on the side of the work, and do a knitted cast on.
Yarn: the pattern is written for the fingering weight yarn, 800 yds (730 m) is needed if you will go exactly as the pattern says. But it is easy to customize to your preferences. Choose Sport or DK weight and corresponding needles and you’re good to go, just check how long and wide you would like the scarf and decrease or increase the number of elements in each layer, or the number of layers.
I think that variegated hand-dyed yarn is a great fit for this design. All the different colors play well together in every element and you can really see why you grabbed this particular colorway from the yarn shelf.
The sample is made with Yarn Bee Authentic Hand Dyed yarn, 100% Merino wool 400 yds (365 m)/100 g, color Burnished Saffron.
If you’ll be working with hand-dyed yarn with 2 skeins and don’t want to see the possible color differences, alternate the skeins regularly.
I didn’t alternate the skeins for my sample and you can see that one half (2 layers) of the scarf is darker than the other half. But I like it here because it looks like the upper and lower sides of a real snake (reptile).
Needles: size US 6 (4 mm). Because you'll be working with a small number of stitches and you’ll be turning each element constantly, I recommend choosing short needles, maybe 8” (20 cm) DPNs, or straight needles.
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