Inspired by the pattern suggested by my good friend Norah here, using up some of my stash yarn. I’ll keep going a bit longer until there’s just enough left for some fringeing or maybe bobbles. It’s a useful project to take to craft group meetings but it’s taking ages as I only ever work on it there, and there are so many distractions! Tea, cake, friendly gossip, other people’s projects to coo over…

4th August 2022

Well it’s taken nearly nine months and a heatwave for me to get round to finishing this! Been completely bogged down by a complex new design and lots of other things. I decided against a fringe or bobbles (bit fiddly) so I managed to work out a two-row edging for the ends of the scarf. Left as they were they didn’t match and looked a bit unfinished. Pleased with the result - it adds a pretty touch I think!

Here’s a rough guide to what I did:

First row to straighten the edge: a repeating pattern of 5 dc, 1 hdc, 3 sc, 1 hdc, positioned so that the central dc is in the middle of a ‘valley’ and the central sc is at the top of a ‘hill’. Skip a few stitches evenly across the row to keep this correct, counting back from the centre of the first hill or valley to see exactly which stitch to start with. Add an extra one at the end of the row.

Second row to add shells: begin with 1 sc, then skip next 2 sts, 7 dc in next st, skip next 2 st, sc in next st. Repeat the bit in bold to the end of the row.

(My scarf has three original pattern repeats so the first straightening row has 31 stitches. Fudge if necessary! A wider scarf would need the shells to be spaced out differently, unless it was multiples of three repeats, or any edging pattern could be used now the edge is straight. Crab stitch?)

Both ends match!

P.S. I used the original version of the pattern which I understand has now been slightly updated.