Reversible faux cable scarf

I asked my 22-year-old son what I could knit for him. (I don't like wasting my time on stuff that will not be used.) He said he could use a scarf. So, the hunt began - I needed something manly enough for him and fun enough to knit for me. I eventually found an online pattern, couldn't make heads or tails of it, so I came up with this. I think it works. He wanted it long enough to fold in half and poke the ends through the fold - ya know what I mean? Anyway, that ended up being 7 feet long. To wear unfolded, the scarf really only needs to be 4 to 5 feet long.

The pattern is what I like to call a faux cable (I don't know - the knitter's bibles probably have an "official" name for it). It looks like cables, but you don't need a cable needle and (wonder of wonders) you don't have a "wrong side" to this scarf.







Both sides look the same. The 1 x 1 ribbing at each edge of the scarf also prevents the scarf from rolling up into a tube (I hate when that happens!).

When I was about 5 feet into the scarf, I could tell I was going to run out of one of my colors before it was long enough to wear folded in half, so I decided to throw in some asymmetrical stripes on one end. That'ld be stylish, right? I was so hoping it wouldn't just look stupid - like I'd run out of yarn, or something. I recently took a class offered by my local weaver's guild on stripes, (taught by Sarah Pilgrim - don't you just love that name?) so I took this opportunity to play around with one of the ideas she gave us. I decided to try using the Fibonacci series to design my stripes. Here's how it works:

You add two numbers together to get the next number. So, if you start with 1, you add the number before that to it to get the next number. What did you say? There's nothing before 1? Exactly right! So you add "nothing" to 1, in other words 0. Now your series is 1, 1. Now it gets easy. If you can just remember how to set it up, you've got it made.

1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21...

This series is also known as the Golden something or other (you're on the Internet, look it up). It's what makes the Mona Lisa's face look so -- so right.

Since I needed another couple of feet on my scarf, I decided to start with 8 and go down to the 1,1 at the end. 8 of what, you ask? 8 repeats of my basic pattern. Each 6-row repeat gave me an inch, so that was 20 more inches - close enough to 7 feet for me.

Here's a picture of how the stripes turned out. Since I was holding the yarn double, two different colors, I just replaced the color I was running out of with a different color. It kind of kept things the same, but I was hoping the stripes would still show up well enough.

Yarn: Mountain Colors, Bearfoot - held double

Color: A deep burgundy with a variegated yarn with lots of the same deep burgundy.

Colors added: Dark brown, variegated green, light brown, variegated blue, fuchsia, teal.

Needles: US size 8

gauge: Doesn't matter - it's a scarf, not a sweater!

Abbreviations:

K - knit

P - purl

K2tog - knit two together

K2K - K2tog but leave on needle, knit the first st again and slip both sts off needle

Here's the pattern:

CO 36

Setup row: [K1, P1] X 3; repeat K4, P4 until last 6 stitches, [K1, P1] X3

1st row: [K1, P1] X 3; repeat K2, K2K, P4 until last 6 stitches, [K1, P1] X3

2nd row: repeat 1st row (turning work, so you're now knitting on the "back" of the scarf)

3rd row: [K1, P1] X 3; repeat K1, K2K, K1, P4 until last 6 stitches, [K1, P1] X3

4th row: repeat 3rd row

5th row: [K1, P1] X 3; repeat K2K, K2, P4 until last 6 stitches, [K1, P1] X3

6th row: repeat 5th row

Repeat rows 1-6 until the scarf is of the desired length, ending on row six. Bind off in pattern, substituting K4 for the K2K nonsense.