The insight that an unblocked ribbed rectangle would look like stockinette but resist curling was delivered to me by Jared Flood and his Noro Striped Scarf, when I was a new knitter who spent more time reading about knitting than practicing the craft, though I’m sure there are countless knitters down the ages who had this same realization on their own. I held onto the idea for the past several years, waiting for the day when I was ready to pass up all of the delightfully textured and patterned scarves and wraps out there in favor of 5+ feet of ribbing.

That day came when I realized that I had lingering bits of grey Cascade 220 Superwash Sport—too much to throw away but not enough to do much with. That realization coincided with a need to take a break from a sweater project that had me deeply creatively blocked. I decided to create a simple scarf in a cozy yarn with accent stripes that would use up the scraps lying in my stash, thereby coordinating with my Hermione Hearts Ron and my Holding Hands with Ron.

I succeeded at making a matched set of warm woolies, but when it came to using up those pesky scraps, the joke’s on me, because it turns out I have another entire skein still in my stash that I’d forgotten about.

Construction

• Navy = US 4 / Grey = US 3
• Cast on 67 sts using long-tail method.
• Slip 1 purlwise with yarn in front, (k1, p1) to end.
• Slip 1 purlwise with yarn in back, (p1, k1) to end.
• Stripe counts:

32 rows navy
8 rows grey
8 rows navy
8 rows grey
8 rows navy
8 rows grey
Knit until you run out of navy yarn
Join new cake of navy yarn
Repeat in reverse
Bind off

• To make sure both halves of the scarf were approximately the same size without having to count hundreds of rows, I periodically folded the scarf in loosely half at the point where the second cake of yarn was joined. When I had knit enough that the folded scarf reached roughly where the last grey stripe had ended, I started another grey stripe.
• For the bind-off row, I made six or seven attempts using different methods and needle sizes, because I couldn’t settle on something that was stretchy enough not to pucker the ribbing, but snug enough not to flare it either. I thought I’d made a note of what I eventually settled on, but apparently not. T_T
• To weave in the ends, I referenced two TECHknitter posts for illustrations: one that describes duplicate stitch and one that describes a method appropriate for columns of ribbing, which was especially handy at the edges.

Finished Measurements
Length: 74 inches
Width: 5.75 inches