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So one really easy way to make a beautiful beginner's scarf that looks more complicated
than it is, is to work a gather. So I'm going to show you how to work a gather now. You
can do them as often or as infrequently as you want to change the look of your scarf.
So I've been knitting this fabric, stockinette, knitting on the front and purling on the back
on a size 13 needle, but now I'm going to come in with a size 8 needle, and do a drastic
decrease row, which means I'm going to decrease across the entire row.
And I'm knitting two together, which is a right leaning decrease, but you could work
any decrease you want, as long as it's drastically reducing the number of stitches. So I'm reducing
the number of stitches by 50% and I'm going way down on my needle size. Now I am working
my gather in garter stitch, as you can see just two rows. So now I'm going to knit across
the back, because I'm working garter. I'm going to slip the first stitch. Now I have
half as many stitches to work on.
So that made one garter stitch row and I've been working two, but you can do as many as
you want. When you are ready to go back to your big needle what you're going to do is,
you're going to increase across first, because it's really hard to stick the giant 13 needle
into these size 8 loops. So before I'm ready to work with my bigger needle, again when
I'm coming out of my gather, I'm going to increase into every single stitch.
And I really like knit one front and back, so I'm going to work those increases, but
you could work any increase you feel like; M1 would be an invisible increase; a yarn
over would add a little lacy eyelet row to your increased row. That would make a really
cool gather. I'm going to do knit one front and back to get back to my original number
of stitches.
So here we are finishing our increase row and now we're going to use the bigger needle
to start stockinette again. So remember stockinette is purling on the back, so I'm going to purl
every stitch on this row and then I would knit every stitch on the front, and my fabric
would balloon back out again.
So to work a gather all you do is decrease drastically and use a much smaller needle
for as long as you want. Then when you're done with your gather, you increase every
single stitch and start working your stitch pattern, again with your bigger needle. That
is how to make a gathered scarf.