My First Knit Scarf

Posted by Kelly Gilliam Mar 24, 2006

Today I wanted to talk about my first project, meaning the first one that I actually started and completed. While I have fond memories of knitting with my blue acrylic wool with my mom teaching me how to knit - I never did finish just whatever it was I thought that I was knitting. I still do have a bit of that yarn - an unfinished skein that sits in one of my four stash drawers, which I can't bring myself to throw away. However, that was not my first real project.

My first project was a scarf. I made my way to the local Zellers - the cheap department-type store here in Canada, much like a low-key Wal-Mart or K-Mart, intent on finding something to do with myself. I ran across the one half isle of yarn that they had, in plastic bags, with a small selection of knitting needles. I looked up and down the racks of synthetic yarns, thinking "why not?" to myself. I chose ten small skeins, half a dark grass green, and the other half an obnoxious celadon. I decided these were to become a scarf for myself. These skeins I would transform into a luxurious scarf, one that would fill me with unimaginable pride that I could tell people that yes, I had indeed made it myself.

I got home, and cast on. It had surprised me to realize that I had remembered the three foundation steps my mom had taught me at our kitchen table. I could cast on, garter stitch, and bind off with the best of them I thought to myself. So I knit. And knit... and knit. It was a skinny scarf, measuring only five inches across, and every fifteenth row I would work to the end, and switch colours. At this point I had not yet learned the finer points of switching colours, even at the beginning of a row, so I made it up. I tied off the ends of the yarns together, and it seemed logical for me to just cut off the trailing ends.

Eventually my garter-stitch scarf had worked itself into being about six and a half feet long. I was coming up to about two months of knitting this one scarf, and decided that it was time to bind off. Having just enough grass-green yarn left, I made some tassels the best I could figure out how, after all, I've always been the kind of girl intent on figuring stuff out for myself, even when it brings me at a disadvantage. I must say though, those tassels don't look bad for a beginning knitter.

I threw the scarf around my neck, and despite the warm winters in Vancouver managed to wear that scarf anywhere. I actually did get asked a few times where I had purchased my scarf, to which I would proudly reply, "Why, I made it myself!"

I still have that scarf, draped on a hook by my door. Despite the fact that it looks a little mangy, and is obviously done by the hand of a very new knitter, I'm still proud of it, regardless of all its flaws, a few twisted stitches, the big knots at the end of the colour change rows, and the tassels that even look a little awkward. Sometimes I even pull it out and wear it if the mood strikes.

© Kelly Gilliam, 2006. Reproduction without permission is prohibited.