Faraday scarf by Nicki Merrall
New knitting pattern published by The Knitter magazine
The Knitter magazine has just published the pattern for my latest design, Faraday, a unisex scarf.
Inspiration for Faraday
I had the idea for Faraday a few years ago during an early morning creativity session resulting from insomnia. I was playing around with stripes patterns generated by sequences. At this point, I should disclose that I loved mathematics at school. I looked at different ways of arranging the stipe patterns. I wanted to have the stripes in different sections at angles to each other. After considering various options, I decided to use entrelac because the stripes in each module are at right angles to those in adjacent modules. I decided to make the entrelac sections big, so the overall effect would be bold. I eliminated the square sections, so the scarf could be a sensible width. The entrelac pattern is so large-scale that it doesn’t really look like entrelac. And, of course, it is far less fiddly to knit!
You cast on the stitches for the length of the scarf, and then work the triangles, in garter stitch, one at a time along one side, before changing direction and working the triangles along the second side. You follow different a stripe sequence for each triangle. The number of rows in each colour changes along the length, so that pink is the dominant colour at one end and grey at the other. Finally, you work an i-cord edging around all four sides.
Yarn details
I chose to knit Faraday using two yarns from Baa Ram Ewe. Baa Ram Ewe is a yarn shop in Leeds, Yorkshire. They spin and dye their own-brand yarns in Yorkshire using fleece from heritage sheep breeds.
Titus is a 4-ply yarn (used double for this scarf) made from 50% Wensleydale Longwool, 20% Bluefaced Leicester wool, 30% UK alpaca. Dovestone DK is made from 50% Bluefaced Leicester wool, 25% Wensleydale Longwool and 25% dark brown Masham wool.
Since I designed Faraday, Dovestone DK has been discontinued and replaced by Winterburn DK. Winterburn DK is made from 50% Bluefaced Leicester wool, 50% Masham wool and is completely interchangeable with Dovestone DK. Both Dovestone and Winterburn contain Masham wool; the fleece is dyed in its natural colour so that the dyed yarns are deeper in colour than the corresponding ones in Titus. Both are available in 20 beautiful different colours. I am really looking forward to seeing Faraday knit in different colour combinations.
You will need just over one hand of each colour for this scarf, so although you’ll need to buy two hanks of each, you will have plenty of yarn left-over for another project. Baa Ram Ewe have both these yarns dyed using the same colours, but the Winterburn yarn base is slightly darker, therefore the colours are deeper. You could use any two colours in Winterburn or Titus.
Faraday scarf pattern details
The scarf is 150 cm| 59 inches long and 19 cm | 7 1/2 inches wide.
You’ll need 4.0 mm | UK 8 | US 6 circular straight needles for the main part of the scarf and 4.0 mm | UK 8 | US 6 double-pointed needles for the i-cord edging. You’ll also need a stitch marker and some waste yarn for the provisional cast-on used to start the i-cord.
The pattern for the Faraday scarf is available in The Knitter magazine, Issue 130.
