Linen Stitch Scarf

The name of this pattern is the Koigu Linen Stitch Scarf. I purchased it, along with 3 curated, coordinating skeins of Koigu yarn from a local yarn shop several years ago, but it could be made with any brand of fingering weight yarn. I started it back then, and made some progress off and on over the years, but because of the long rows, I just never focused on getting it done.

When I thought I was pretty much done for this month, I stopped and took a photo. It seemed as if I hadn’t made much progress, but I’d knit two full repeats (and a little bit more) of the pattern since the last time I picked it up. Considering that each repeat contains 2700 stitches, that’s over 5400 stitches total. The reason it didn’t seem like much is that a repeat of the pattern is only about a half an inch high.

So I measured, and had 4.5 inches knit. I originally thought the pattern said to knit 7 inches, but decided to check the instructions. You can imagine my surprise when I saw it actually said 5 inches – I was so close!

I decided to go ahead and keep on knitting, because I thought I could finish it up this month. I completed the next repeat, and then came the conundrum: how to bind it off. I had cast on with an alternating cable cast on, which is lovely and very stretchy (one of the suggestions was to use a stretchy cast on, or not to cast on too tightly). Of course, that was not the method that the pattern (nor any other samples I found) used for the cast on. I knew that a regular bind off, even in pattern, would not match the stretchiness nor the appearance of the cast on, so I went in search of something else.

Many others who have knitted this scarf chose to use the icelandic bind off, but I tried it and was not happy with it. Maybe I was doing it wrong, but it wasn’t stretchy at all for me. I tried a regular bind off in pattern, but I didn’t like the look of it either. So, I searched for a bind off that was similar to the alternate cable cast on, and lo and behold, found this alternate cable bind off video tutorial! Oh happy day, it worked!

And here is my finished scarf, woohoo!

I don’t usually like fringe, but it works in this design, and that fringe made it so that I had no ends to weave in – bonus!