Transcript
So one really easy way to make a beautiful beginner’s scarf that looks more complicated than it is, is to work a gather. So I’m going to show you how to work a gather now. You can do them as often or as infrequently as you want to change the look of your scarf. So I’ve been knitting this fabric, stockinette, knitting on the front and purling on the back on a size 13 needle, but now I’m going to come in with a size 8 needle, and do a drastic decrease row, which means I’m going to decrease across the entire row.
And I’m knitting two together, which is a right leaning decrease, but you could work any decrease you want, as long as it’s drastically reducing the number of stitches. So I’m reducing the number of stitches by 50% and I’m going way down on my needle size. Now I am working my gather in garter stitch, as you can see just two rows. So now I’m going to knit across the back, because I’m working garter. I’m going to slip the first stitch. Now I have half as many stitches to work on.
So that made one garter stitch row and I’ve been working two, but you can do as many as you want. When you are ready to go back to your big needle what you’re going to do is, you’re going to increase across first, because it’s really hard to stick the giant 13 needle into these size 8 loops. So before I’m ready to work with my bigger needle, again when I’m coming out of my gather, I’m going to increase into every single stitch.
And I really like knit one front and back, so I’m going to work those increases, but you could work any increase you feel like; M1 would be an invisible increase; a yarn over would add a little lacy eyelet row to your increased row. That would make a really cool gather. I’m going to do knit one front and back to get back to my original number of stitches.
So here we are finishing our increase row and now we’re going to use the bigger needle to start stockinette again. So remember stockinette is purling on the back, so I’m going to purl every stitch on this row and then I would knit every stitch on the front, and my fabric would balloon back out again.
So to work a gather all you do is decrease drastically and use a much smaller needle for as long as you want. Then when you’re done with your gather, you increase every single stitch and start working your stitch pattern, again with your bigger needle. That is how to make a gathered scarf.
