Day 41 and the Hobo

I am forever looking for ways to use up the very short bits that are otherwise going to waste. Along with The Weave, this is an excellent way to use up mismatched weight novelty yarns. I did not even look in my bag of scraps when I choose the colors. With the exception of the white fluffy yarn, the yarn is organized totally randomly.

Since you'll need to estimate the number of yards per row, the easiest way to figure this out is by using the long tail cast on. Start with no less than 5 yards and use your longest circular needles you own. If you have the kind that can be extended, this is a terrific time to use them. There's no need to count. Cast on until the scarf is the length that you want it to be or until you run out of your long tail leaving a few inches for fringe. In this way you know that you must have at least 5 yards for one row of knitting. You may find that 5 yards makes a scarf far longer than you want. When you stop casting on, measure the excess of the long tail. 5 yds minus the excess would then be the measurement you need for each row.

For this exact scarf, I couldn't even tell you what yarns were used, but I did cast on the full 5 yards on size 15 needles for about 10 feet of scarf. I did about 15 rows for a width of 4 inches. You can do this in stockinette, garter, seed stitch, or any pattern stitch you want. Keep in mind however that if you want to do a pattern, you should use smoother yarns so that you can at least see the pattern!

Finally, since your ends are loose, you need to secure them in some way. If you're a tidy fan, you might want to darn all the ends in. I'm not that patient and I found it was plenty sturdy to just wait until I was finished and knot the fringes to the fringes next to it. Simple as that!