It’s a dilemma that faces many knitters…how to best show off a gorgeous yarn that is a variegated colorway. If you knit it up in lace, the pattern gets lost in the busyness of the colors, and if you knit it up in cables, the cables also will war against the colors.

The Strand uses a pattern called the Woven Diagonal Herringbone Rib to brilliantly showcase the colorway using a very simple pattern that works up quickly and appears to incorporate yarn “strands” that appear ribbon-like with the knit stitches. The entire scarf/shawlette is worked in easy-to-knit garter stitch, and the rib is a 6 stitch combination of slipped and knit stitches. It is designed in a shallow crescent shape, and is reversible. The border is worked first, followed by short rows that form the body of the scarf.

I used 1 and a half skeins of Merino Wool yarn in madelinetosh sport weight yarn (270 yards per skein) in the Wilted Rose colorway. It worked up to be 48 inches long and 10” deep. My daughter was able to use the equivalent of 1 skein of yarn in Malabrigo’s Silky Merino Wool/Silk blend. It is DK in weight in Azules and she needed 2 of the 150 yards skeins since this yarn comes in small skeins. You can see her scarf under the projects section of this pattern. She did this by using only 1 repeat of the border, while I used 2 repeats. Charts and written instructions are included in the pattern for the border, as well as for the short row section. The finished scarf/shawlette should not require blocking. I am sure this pattern would also work well with solid color yarn since it is a highly textured pattern.