Diagonal Drop Stitch Scarf*

Please note that I’ve added a real pattern for this here.

* This is less of a pattern than a very vague basic recipe you can shape however you want. There are a ton of drop stitch patterns out there that will be better explained than this as well.

I was trying to reply to my mom’s comment on the scarf pattern because I thought it’d be quick- it’s so simple after all. But my “quick” comment was starting to turn into a paragraph and I figured this would be easier. This makes a scarf that looks like a paralellogram instead of a rectangle, but it’s still a basic drop stitch scarf just knit on the bias.

The basic recipe is simple. To start, just try a basic rectangle with a few rows of garter stitch and one row of double or triple wrapped knits.* Swatch the hell out of your yarn until you find the number of rows and dropped stitches you like. For my scarf, I settled on 7 rows of garter stitch and one row of triple wrapped stitches.

* I don’t remember the technical name for this, but instead of wrapping once when you knit, you wrap the yarn around multiple times. On the next row, you knit as usual but drop the extra wraps. That’s what creates the elongated stitches for your dropped stitch pattern.

Once you’ve found what you like, cast on a stitch or two- one will give you sharper corners while two is a bit blunter. Knit that stitch in the front and back to increase and knit the second stitch if there. That’s your first row. Increase the first stitch in every row this way until you have the number of rows you want for your garter block. Then knit your wrapped row. Keep knitting like this until you have the “width” you want. You’ll notice that you’re knitting a triangle.

I laid a needle at the same angle I would have been knitting at. See the triangle below it? As you knit up the straight lines of the body of the scarf, you’ll still be holding it at an angle. I hope from this you can get an idea how to see how wide it’ll be and how sharp your diagonal end. If not, ignore this. Just remember how many repeats you did to get that angle so you can match it up when you finish.

Once you’re happy with your end, you’ll start to work the body. To do this, I increased the first stitch and decreased the last stitch on every other row. Every other row following this, just knit. For example, mine looked like this.

Rows 1,3,5,7= Kfb, k to last 2 st, k2tog

Rows 2,4,6= k to end

Row 8= wrap each k 3x

Increasing the row after my dropped stitches was strange, so instead of Kfb, I had enough give in my last dropped stitch to thumb loop it onto the needle as my extra stitch. If that doesn’t make sense, just ignore it. Knit this basic pattern until you’re happy with the length.

To end the scarf, do the same number of row or pattern repeats you did when you started, but k2tog at the beginning of every row instead. Once you get back to your 1 or 2 stitches, bind off.

I really hope this made sense. I didn’t want to just write out the pattern that I used because I think this is an easy enough concept to adapt. Unless, of course, I just confused you more. In that case, find a real pattern written by a competent person.