A simple scarf with elegance, Bridges of Marion County was designed to show off self-striping fingering-weight yarns in luxury fibers that are just too lovely to be socks hidden away in your shoes.

The lace borders are worked from the cast-on edge up. To get matching lace edgings, you will knit one edging and the first two rows of the scarf body, and place the work on a stitch holder. Cut the yarn, cast on again, knit the second edging, then knit the body of the scarf. then graft the first border to the live stitches at the end. This allows you to use up every last bit of a skein of luxury yarn, or adjust the length of the scarf to your own needs.

The pattern’s story:

I had in my stash a skein of 480 yards of handspun silk blend yarn with long runs of blues, greens, and deep forest green that was nearly black. Since the colors reminded me of forest and sky reflected the waterways in the Willamette Valley where I live, I wanted a design in the same theme that also showed off the long color runs. I chose a simple chevron that suggested ripples, and a leafy lace that made me think of willows and cottonwoods along the banks of the rivers. One day as I was working on the scarf, my hubby wanted to take a drive to find and photograph the covered bridges in the area, and I realized that the structure of the chevron lace was echoed in the architecture of the covered bridges — hence the name Bridges of Marion County.