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Huge green scarf

This is the first piece I ever did. After an initial practice piece that involved a few rows each of garter, stockinette, and various sizes of rib, I decided to start this. I wanted something wide---so I could pull it up over my nose without exposing my neck---but that would weigh flat. Plain old garter stitch was out (too boring), and stockinette and rib would curl at the sides. I'd heard of seed and moss stitch, but the pattern seemed too small; but they would lay flat, at least, and be interesting. So I tried a 3x3 grid, which I later learned was called a "basketweave" pattern.

My stitch count thus needed to be a multiple of three, and an odd multiple at that (since I wanted the scarf to be symmetric). I picked 51 stitches, because what the heck, 17 is prime. This made for a very wide scarf, the moreso as I was knitting extremely loosely then.

I started this project around the first of April, 2003, and bound it off on 7 May.

The pattern

Rows 1-5: Knit back and forth (garter stitch).
Row 6: k3, *p3, k3, rpt from *
Row 7: p3, *k3, p3, rpt from *
Row 8: Repeat row 6
Row 9-11: Repeat rows 6-8

Continue until done---in my case around four and a half feet (I wanted it *long*, too)---and then finish off with five more rows of garter stitch.

Materials

I started off with a pair of red plastic size 7 needles, but they were much too short to hold this width of scarf, so I moved to a metal size 7 circular needle for the remainder of the piece.

The yarn is acrylic; I'm glad I started with it, because now that I've knit with other things I never plan to knit with acrylic again. It makes my hands sweat, and it's just not as pleasing to work with as cotton or wool.