When my family relocated to Portland, Oregon ten years ago, we left our dear friends Joan and Dominique behind in New York City. Every year I send them locally produced gifts, such as pears from Harry and David. This year, I am long on stash and short on cash, so I decided to be the local producer myself.

Joan wears bright colors, which spectacularly set off her doesn’t-require-a-perm head of salt-and-pepper curls. I grabbed a skein of Crystal Palace Mini Solid Intense Red and whipped out a scarf with a lace edge on one side, a tubular edge on the other, and seed stitch in between.

Dominique will only wear black or white and sticks with simple, elegant clothing. For her scarf, I used a skein of The Fibre Company’s Canopy Fingering in Orchid worked in garter stitch. I tried to keep frills to a minimum, but couldn’t stop myself from inserting a yarn over at the borders, because I love to wrap yarn around air to create designs.

Both scarves are worked flat, end to end, and achieve a lacy effect by using needles one or two sizes larger than the ball band recommendation, then blocking hard to open up the fabric. This has the added advantage of stretching a single skein into a somewhat longer-than-expected finished scarf. Should you substitute yarn, and I hope you do, keep this in mind. Gauge is not critical for these, however, you should work on a larger needle size than you usually would for your yarn.

Each scarf has been test knitted and the pattern has been tech edited.