In love with the road trip scarf

In the last couple of weeks, The Crafternooners group on Facebook have been having a little crochet-along. We’ve been making a road trip scarf using the lovely pattern by Zelna Olivier of the blog Zooty Owl.

In this post I’m showing my own scarf, which I am really pleased with, and adding some tips to help if you are struggling. The great thing about making something as a group is that we all help each other and a few common problems have emerged.

First of all, if you want to find out more about the road trip scarf crochet along you can read my original blog post about our CAL where you can find the links to the pattern and tutorials on Zelna’s blog.

• About the road trip scarf CAL with The Crafternooners

My road trip scarf

The pattern is easy to learn and once you get going the scarf grows quickly. Designed to be easily memorable and with no ends to keep weaving it, its a really relaxing project to do.

I chose to do mine in a 4ply yarn – Drops Fabel Print Sock yarn. I loved the colours but the label doesn’t have a shade name, just a number: Colour 901, Dyelot 3626.

I started the scarf one hot and sunny afternoon, deciding to have an hour in the garden at lunchtime. It grew very quickly and it was exciting to see how the colour changes in the yarn worked together… I didn’t have a lot of time to work on it but this is a quick project that works up very fast if you have a couple of hours to spare.

As you can see from the last photo on the lower right above, the finished scarf is a triangle and has a fancier border around the two bottom edges with a simpler border along the top. Being lazy I made up my own border (needed to go to the computer and check the pattern!) and I like the way its quite ruffly. Details or how I made it later in the post…

Having trouble with your road trip scarf?

Seeing photos posted by other people in the group quite a few reported problems with the shape of their scarf, which wasn’t a triangle. The problem seemed to be missing out some of the stitches at the beginning and end of each round, so that the top of the scarf sloped downwards at each side.

If this is something that happens, it will happen early on so I’ve done a quick video tutorial to show a complete round and the triangle shape that the scarf should be after just a few rows.

The key to getting it right is to make most of the stitches into the tops of the trebles in the previous round, not in between the spaces. The only stitches you do in the spaces between stitches are at the start of each row, at the point, and at the very end of each row. The video shows this in detail.

My finished scarf

Today its actually been cold enough to wear it so I have tried it out just in the office. Its very comfy and although its wool, its quite soft and not scratchy.

Finished scarves by The Crafternooners

These fabulous scarves have been chosen as examples of the fantastic work and creativity of the Facebook group – many more are in progress or already finished and will be on my main Crafternoon Treats Facebook page in a new album soon.

My border

There is no tutorial for this as it is really so basic… I first went all around the edge making a double crochet (UK terms) [single crochet, US terms] in each chain space and in the side of each treble, separated by three chains. This is the only border I have on the longest side. For the two shorter sides I then made the following stitches in each 3 chain space:

• double crochet, half treble, treble, half treble, double crochet (dc, htr, tr, hrt, dc) [UK terms]
• single crochet, half double crochet, double crochet, half double crochet, single crochet (sc, hdc, dc, hdc, sc) [US terms]

I like the ruffled effect that this gives and I haven’t blocked my scarf (I should have and will when I first wash it!).

The only thing I am not sure about are the tassles and beads. I like the flowers but I think the decorations are going to be too much of faff so they might be replaced at some point.

Thank you to Zooty Owl

A big thank you from me and all in the Crafternooners Facebook group for the pattern for this scarf, which was thought up by Zelna Olivier of Zooty Owl. It has been really enjoyable to do and I am sure most of us will be making many more than one 🙂

New supplies for my next scarf

I have been chatting to the lovely people at Designer Yarns UK and have been very lucky to receive a little gift from them of luscious new yarn to try out. This is yarn so beautiful I hardly dare get it out to look at but I will shortly be rolling it up into lovely balls and can’t wait to use it…