Mile-a-minute scarf

I saw the pattern for this mile-a-minute drop stitch scarf at Turvid's blog and was instantly smitten. She wasn't kidding when she wrote it could be made in a single evening!

I've never knitted a drop stitch pattern before, and there is something very disturbing about just dropping stitches from my needles, without actually knitting them. That being said, this is a very easy and friendly pattern, even for a beginner. I'm currently working up the nerve to have a go at this one.

My scarf is knitted with Gjestal's Bris (50% wool, 50% soy) on 7 mm straight needles. 17 stitches gave it a width of ca. 15 cm, and I made it 150 cm long plus 15 cm fringes on either end. I like my scarves really nice and long. ;) I had this yarn lying around after an attempt at entrelac knitting, as it turned out that the yarn really didn't suit that particular project very well. But I knew instantly that this would be perfect!

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This yarn has a very slow colour shift, so to make the fringes appear more even in colour I made up this technique to make them: Wrap the yarn around a stiff whatever-that-has-the-right-size-something. But instead of making one fringe at a time as usual, make them all at the same time by wrapping the yarn the desired number of times around your object. Then go over the same strands again with your yarn, and repeat until you have the fringes as thick as you want them. From the first picture you can see that I have made 15 fringes. (I ended up using only 12 of them.) You can also see that the reverse side of my board is really messy, that's not a problem. Just use the front side as you work. I wrapped the board 7 times, making each fringe 14 strands thick. When you have what you want, cut the strands along the bottom edge - that's the edge where your yarn ends after wrapping. You can cut them all at once, just be careful to gather each one at the top edge so the strands don't get all jumbled up in each other. Use a crochet hook to attatch to the scarf.