As someone who once wrote a blog post entitled Death by Scarf, I could be accused of being ever so slightly hypocritical with this post - but please hear me out.
Whilst I am not, and never would advocate for knitting a 6-foot garter stitch shawl (unless you were going for the full on Tom Bake as Doctor Who cosplay) I do wonder where the strong preponderance for shawls over scarves/stoles came from in recent years.
If you can use Ravelry a quick look through their Accessories/Neck/Torso section is quite illuminating. There are nearly 70,000 shawl patterns listed but only 45,000 scarf patterns - that’s quite a disparity. Especially when you consider that scarves (or stoles - I’m never quite sure of the distinction) to the untrained eye especially might appear to be more forgiving than shawls where shaping is required.
Recently, whilst playing around with a swatch idea for a shawl I got a little carried away and accidentally knit about 10 inches of a scarf. Please tell me I’m not the only one who can lose myself in a meditative piece of knitting and reruns of New Amsterdam on Netflix.
I was having so much fun and the pattern was slowing so beautifully that I decided to just carry on and lo - the Saltaire Summer Stole was born.
Seriously though - the humble scarf does have a lot to recommend it in my opinion. For example:
It’s a lot easier to tell when it’s long enough - just stopping knitting and hold it up.
It makes estimating yarn usage a breeze as each row repeat uses the same amount of yarn.
No pesky shaping to throw off your stitch count.
There’s no risk of a 400-stitch bind off.
Easily customisable - want a wider scarf (or even a blanket) - just add repeats.
What’s not to love?
If you are a member of my paid Substack community you can access a free copy of the Saltaire Summer Stole over there - and if you aren’t, please just tap the link above to check out my Substack and take advantage of a 7-day free trial.
