Solomon's Knot Infinity Scarf - Attempt 1!

I said here that I would write about this scarf-shaped project, so here I go!


Some time ago I bought a ball of Harlequin Chunky yarn in the colour 'Meadow–Voila'. This a 100% acrylic yarn by – you guessed it – Stylecraft! I get really sucked in by these multi-coloured, or self-patterning, yarns, (for example...) as you get the lovely colours without having extra ends to sew in...

I bought this particular yarn as I had been trying to design a hat. I had made a couple with  DK yarn, but wanted to have a go with chunky as I thought this would look nicer. Later on I got to thinking that actually I already have LOADS of hats, and that if we move to the tropics in Australia then I will need ZERO hats (zero warm hats, anyway). So making yet another hat seemed a bit daft, and the yarn ball went into the stash…

Stylecraft Harlequin Chunky

Recently my mother-in-law told me about a scarf she had seen on one of the other ladies at her spinning group (woolly spinning, not exercise spinning). She had loved the scarf, and so asked this lady all about it. It turned out that it was a long, thin scarf, wrapped around many times, and created out of a fine yarn hooked up into Solomon’s Knot stitches - and could I make her one please?

I had never attempted Solomon’s Knot before, but my mother-in-law had already asked this lady about how to do it, and had been told that there were instructional videos to be found on YouTube. I spent an hour or so looking at various diagrams and watching various videos, and then I had a play around. I practised a little with my DK yarn (ever since learning to crochet, I always travel to my in-laws with at least one WIP!), and then moved on to the stunning Manos del Uruguay silk yarn my mother-in-law had. It was so fine that it required a 2mm hook, and I found it a bit tricky to work with such delicate yarn and an unfamiliar stitch.

After a little while working on this scarf, I felt that the quality of my crochet really wasn’t doing justice to the quality of this yarn, and so I put it on hiatus until I had improved, and could bear to unravel my work and start over…

Back at home, I decided to have a go with a bigger yarn until I really got the hang of it and could move onto smaller-weight yarns. Chunky to the rescue! My Stylecraft Harlequin Chunky seemed an ideal yarn to practice with as being chunky weight I could easily see the shape of my stitches, and it was an odd ball so no other project was going to suffer. Plus, being a bit funky I thought it would lead to a nice effect in this pattern, and therefore my practice piece could also be nice enough to use once it was made up. 

Where the yarn ran out...

I began with the idea of making a triangular shawl, however while it was still scarf-shaped my 100g ball of yarn ran out. I just pulled the end through without sewing it in so I could wear it as a scarf in the meantime, while keeping open the option of starting back up again if I decided to get more yarn.

I didn’t get more yarn for this in the end – as I got more yarn for lots of other stuff instead! (see here and here...) – so I just kept using it as a scarf…

As a scarf

The other day I decided to fix this. Frogging quite so much was a bit upsetting! I had to take it all the way back to the first row of stitches, and then back further until it was a much shorter length. 

All that frogged work!

Then instead of keeping it flat, I joined the two ends and began again, adding the Solomon’s Knots in circular rows. When the first row got back to the start I twisted the whole thing before joining it back to the start. This means that when you double-up the finished scarf, it untwists and sits better. 

Then I simply carried on until I ran out of yarn. Once I finished it, I tried it on and realised that it wasn’t quite the right size – doubled-up it was just that little bit too small to fit comfortably around my neck, while in a single loop it was too large around. 

Oops!

It does, however, make a rather sweet ponchita!

Front

Back

I don't think it will need much tinkering for this to work properly as a design, or I could simply make it a little larger so it works as an infinity scarf.

I don't make a good model, but you can see better how it works if it's on a person...

You can see the lovely effect the Solomon's Knot stitch creates. I've used long loops for this one, but you can make the loops whatever size you like.

I can’t quite bring myself to start over again at the moment, so for now I have just played around with wearing it as it is. When I do remake it though, I might have a go at writing a pattern for it as I haven’t seen one quite like this online anywhere so far…

Size issues aside, I’m quite pleased with how it’s turned out :)