I’m going to make a scarf with the gingko pattern on both ends. I am going to cast on both ends on a long circular and graft them together when they’re both long enough.

I didn’t realize the pattern wasn’t charted, and I couldn’t imagine making the pattern without a chart, so I made one. I will send it to the pattern designer and see if she wants to include it in the pattern. So I frogged this original version and made the large-leaf version with 4 leaves.

I modified the pattern so that each leaf is bigger, the border wider, the body of the scarf does not narrow further after the narrowing of the leaves, and the stems of the leaves will morph into a sort of stripe all the way down the body of the scarf. I have a chart for this version as well as the original pattern.

The first picture of the knitting is of the original pattern with three of the smaller leaves. It was 8” wide at the bottom and would have been narrower through the body, hence my making the whole thing bigger. I am making this with sport weight yarn and a 6 needle, so it would have been bigger with the original pattern’s worsted and 7 needle.

Both charts that I made allow you to make as many leaves as you want and give the stitch counts with each number of leaves so you can plan the scarf with any weight yarn and needle.

To join the two halves I first tried Kitchener stitch, changing the direction of going into the stitch according to the stitch being threaded. It ended up looking really messy, so I took out the Kitchener. I extrapolated from this video to see how to handle the purl stitches. The first picture of the join is with the Kitchener stitch.

Instead I did a 3-needle bind-off with wrong sides together and picking up each stitch like a knit stitch if the facing side is a knit, purl-wise if the facing side is a purl. It has a slight dip on the right side and a small ridge on the wrong side, both of which are, I think, as good as it’s going to get after blocking. I was hoping for invisible, but…. I used this video, which shows the technique in English and Continental, and this video, a bit more clear but demonstrating in English only, to see how to do the bind off to make it near invisible within a pattern of knits and purls.

It turned out nice and cozy and I love the ginkgos. I hope Carol will love it.