Squishy Infinity Scarf

I have wanted to make myself an infinity scarf for a very long time. These scarves are really simple to make. Finding yarn that was soft and drapey in colours I absolutely loved, proved to be more difficult. But sometimes the universe is all perfectly aligned and I'm in the right place at the right time!

The little haberdashery where I spend far too much time (and money!) put a few balls of Elle Tropical on special at a ridiculously marked-down price. With 75% off the normal price, I was a bit skeptical to say the least (there had to be something wrong with it at that price) but the squishiness of the yarn twisted my rubber arm.

Okay, maybe it wasn't just the excellent price and the wonderful feel of the yarn.

In the dead of winter, when you're standing in front of beautifully coloured balls of yarn with extremely tantalizing names like Antigua, Maldives, Maui, Tahiti and Bali - your arm is twisted. The images of white beaches and clear blue seas won this round. Don't judge me. I'm clearly a marketer's dream customer.

I bought three 100g balls of Maui (all they had) which has a burgundy/beige/cream/dark green and surprisingly, grey, mix of colours. I used 5.5mm knitting needles because I tend to knit quite tightly. I cast on 30 stitches and did plain garter stitch for about 120cm. I didn't want the scarf too long and this was how far I got on one ball.

I have since developed a love-hate relationship with this yarn.

It has a very thin nylon thread that runs through it. The thread forces you to concentrate on the knitting because it is very easy to split the yarn. You cannot simply engage auto-knit and churn out a scarf while powering through your favourite television series.

The other challenge is that the "bulk" of the yarn slides over the thread, which means you have to be extremely careful not to create a bunched up or gathered section in the yarn. Initially I thought that the "bulk" was stretching, but it wasn't.

This yarn also has enormous differences in thickness. It goes from one extreme to the other - super extra chunky thick and then you'll get a long section which is so thin it is almost the thickness of embroidery thread. I don't think you could even call those thin sections quarter ply!

This wasn't obvious when the yarn was still in the shop, so I wasn't pleased to discover this. How they average this extreme variance out and get to Double Knit weight is completely beyond me.

However, all the things I didn't particularly like about working with this, make it amazing in the finished product.



The difference in weight creates the most awesome texture and drape - just the qualities I was looking for in my scarf. I'm not generally a huge fan of variegated yarns because the colour changes always seem to be so sudden, but this changes gradually and creates a beautiful subtle striping effect.

Just look at the texture in the scarf. Look carefully at the picture below and you can see the nylon thread I was talking about.

I really, really love the colours.

I could so easily spend the day just feeling this softness.

Right about now, winter doesn't seem so bad.