Purling my way through three color blocked scarves was a great way in 2023 to get back to knitting. The colors – turquoise, ivory, purple and ruby colors from the Lion Brand’s Wool-Ease yarn line. This blended yarn is made from 80% acrylic and 20% wool and is a #6 super bulky weight.
I love the look of blended yarn for scarves knitted in a purl stitch. The purl stitch was the first I learned a few years. It is easy, repetitive and gives a consistent look.
These scarves are all constructed pretty much the same way – 22 purl stitches across and between ### rows. I really like my scarves longer to be able to wrap around the neck while still having the length.
One caution (color changing): Although I’m happy with the result of these scarves, I think my color-changing was inconsistent. You can see in the above image and below one. The bottom of the stitch of one color shows in the new color’s row. This happens because I cut the thread and knotted the new and old colors together. So, these scarves have smaller knots in them where I changed colors.
What I learned: The proper way to change colors is not to make a knot of the new and old colors. You should interknit the new color with the old one. Then, you continue knitting new stitches, burying the old and new strands. All loose ends of yarn get weaved back through the scarf at the end. There is a great video showing the color changing while knitting a purl stitch here on the Nimble Needles website.
Another caution (stitch count): With these scarves, it is important to keep counting the number of stitches. You must count them across as you purl up. You can easily go off of your count which will make the scarf a little wonky. I can cop to this mistake as I get a bit lazy in counting my stitches.
What I learned: To mitigate this problem, I trim all of my scarves with a single crochet stitch. I use a coordinating trim color. So, for these scarves, I used the purple which really tied the colors together in each scarf. I think it was very successful.
Finally, I added the fringe at the top and bottom of the scarf. You can find tons of sites online for instructions on doing fringe. The Knitting Wikihow site has a good article on creating fringe for crochet and knitted projects.
Resources
- Lion Brand Wool-Ease yarn, #6 Bulky, 3-pack – Amazon
Campfire (Ruby) – 640-621
Raisin (Purple) – 640-144
Caribbean (Turquoise) – discontinued by Lion Brand;
* a good alternative for a blended, bulky (#6) yarn is Lion Brand’s Hometown, Lake Tahoe Blue
Sequoia (Brown) – 640-501
Oatmeal (Ivory) – 640-123E - Bamboo knitting needles – Amazon
- Rubber grip crochet needles – Amazon
angelaheathmakerstudio.com 
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