Merry Christmas, Ravelry! Here’s my early gift to you.

This scarf is knit bottom up, so to speak, starting with the bottom of the snowman’s body, kind of like a sock, I guess. The snowman is 3 graded sized balls high and then there are 7 more snowballs. The pictures are of the one I made last year, which had only 6 snowballs and I found was 1 ball short of a good length for being tied around the neck, but I did adjust this pattern to make the snowballs more circular.

I have little to no experience writing a pattern, so I don’t guarantee anything. And in fact, my snowballs are less than perfect circles, so if you can help make them better, please do add to comments. Anyway, here is the account of how I made the scarf… a year ago… to the best of my recollection. (Sorry, don’t know how this ended up 8 pages!)

I knit this scarf as a flat tube, magic loop on 1 circular needle. I imagine this could also be knit on double pointed needles, or on 2 circulars (if you don’t have 1 long enough to magic loop) but I don’t know how to adjust for this in the pattern, or if it’s even necessary. As I said, this is more a recount of what I did to make it. Please do add to comments if you can help others with this.

Techniques used:
Judy’s Magic cast on, backwards loop cast on, stockinette stitch, garter stitch, knitting in the round magic loop on 1 long circular needle, lifted increases, knit front back increases, k2tog/ssk decreases, kitchener stitch, embroidery

Materials:
1 ball 140g, 266m white worsted weight yarn
21g, 40m red worsted weight yarn
5g, 10m black worsted weight yarn
small scrap, 1m orange worsted weight yarn
(I used Red Heart Soft Touch Yarn for white/red and some Patons scraps for the black/orange - see my project page)

15Nov2011
So I just read that you “can’t” use lifted increases 2 rounds in a row, which is exactly what I did to start the first snowman circle. The thing is, the same stitch gets lifted several times and I used this because I was trying to maintain the frame that the lifted increases makes around the edge of the circle. However, if you want, you could use a Kfb increase between the 1st lifted increase and what I had as the 3rd one. I think this would still maintain the look of the framed edge.

So, at the very beginning, for the Snowman: Bottom Body Section, where it reads:
Rnd 3 Incr. front sts: (K1, RLI, K to last st, LLI, K1) repeat on back sts (17, 17)
you could switch it to:
Rnd 3 Incr. front sts: (Kfb, K to last 2 sts, Kfb, K1) repeat on back sts (17, 17)