Knitting and so on: Random Bubbles Lace Scarf

As light as gossamer and as delicate as flower petals - this scarf is knitted from only one 50 gram skein of lace weight yarn.

Exploring the random lace technique a bit further - I wanted to knit a shaped scarf. And to make the counting a bit easier, I thought I'd use the shaping of the Seifenblasen Lace Scarf - which worked quite well in the end. This means that random lace sections will be alternated with sections of garter stitch with short rows.

Please note: This is not a stitch-by-stitch pattern. The Random sections are knitted, well, at random – giving you a unique piece of knitware. Therefore, there are no detailed pattern instructions for these sections. However, the instructions give you rules and guidelines on how to produce a piece of random lace that looks similar to the one in the pictures.

This work by Knitting and so on is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

русский / Russian Version: lutik (Ravelry name) made a video (in Russian) explaining how to do this scarf. It's available on YouTube here.

Materials or What You Need to Knit

Yarn, I’d suggest something that blocks well (i.e. with a high percentage of wool) in fingering weight or finer. For the scarf in the pictures, I used a bit less than 50 grams of lace weight yarn Lace Top by Lana Stop
Needles (a bit bigger than what the yarn calls for), I used 3.25 mm needles.
Tapestry needle to weave in ends
The ability and the willingness to count your stitches over and over again … since there are not pattern repeats or anything that could help, it’s easy to lose track of where you are in the row. This is a concentration exercise, i.e. NOT something that I would take to my local knitting group. Since it’s be impossible for me to follow a conversation and count stitches at the same time, it’d make me very unsocial :)
The patience to knit a piece that will look extremely crumpled and not very attractive, while you are knitting it. I will look so much better after blocking - see picture below.

Techniques and Abbreviations

Short rows are a technique to shape your knitting by not finishing a row but turning before you reach the end. To avoid hole there are several techniques - the most well-known are "wrap and turn" ("w+t" for short, shown for example in this YouTube video by Garnstudio Drops Desing) or German short rows with double stitches (as shown in this YouTube video by Very Pink Knits). The pattern is written with "wraps and turns", but you can also use German short rows - just make sure that the double stitch is the one that would have been wrapped (if you had used the "wrap and turn" technique).
Other abbreviations for stitches used here - and links to how-to videos

k2tog (right-leaning decrease): https://youtu.be/ptZsAT770i8
ssk (left-leaning decrease): https://youtu.be/RGwcYW3GG3M
centered double decrease (or sl2tog, k1, p2sso): https://youtu.be/en3Yq2er4RI
yo (increase): https://youtu.be/3QbFhh8u4L8
yo twice (double increase): https://youtu.be/8NEAw0qtR70
k yo k into one stitch: https://youtu.be/yAQxguVIRYY

Instructions to knit the scarf

CO12 sts

Step 1: Knit one random lace section, i.e. 16 rows of random lace

Step 2: Knit one increasing short row section (see instructions below)

Repeat steps 1 and 2 until your scarf is about half as wide as you want it to be and knit another random lace section (16 rows of random lace)
(for me this was the case after 14 random lace sections)

Step 3: Knit a neutral short row section (see instructions below)
Step 4: Knit on random lace section, i.e. 16 rows of random lace

Step 5: Knit a decreasing short row section (see instructions below)
Step 6: Knit a random lace section, i.e. 16 rows of random lace
Repeat steps 5 and 6 until there are 12 sts on your needles (the number of increasing short row sections should be equal to the number of decreasing short row sections)

Bind off loosly.
Weave in ends and block.

How to Knit Random Lace Section

Basically, knit decreases and yarn-overs in a random manner and make sure that after a row you have the same number of stitches you started with. That’s it.
Distribute the increases and decreases evenly within one row, i.e. don’t make too many decreases before you do increases (and vice-versa) – or else your piece will look crooked – at least before blocking.
After a bit of trying, I only counted the increases and decreases, i.e. “plus one” for every yarn over and “minus one” for every decrease, and making sure that the count is zero at the end of a row. This worked fine for the first few random sections (i.e. section with less than 25 or so stitches), but after the rows got longer, it became difficult to keep track and I had to recount the row. I guess it doesn’t matter if you lose one stitch in a row, as long as you make it up in the next one.
To have a knit-effect on RS, I only did “knit-decreases” (e.g. k2tog, ssk, sl1-k2tog-psso) on RS and purl-decreases (e.g. p2tog, p2togtbl, p3tog) on WS. For increases I only did yarn overs or yarn over twice (instead of mk1-stitches) to get “lacy” holes.
To get a nice edging, I started every RS row with sl1 purl-wise and every WS row with sl1 knit-wise.
About 20-25 percent of my stitches per row were yarn overs – with of course the matching number of decreases. If you do more, the lace will look more delicate; if you do less, it will look more structure – but both that’s a question of taste.
As a last advice, do not overthink this! If you get your stitch count right (roughly), it is practically impossible to mess this up.

Short Row Section - Increasing

Before knitting the section, devide the number of on your needles stitches by 4. This is your number X for the coming short row section.
(Since the scarf is started with 12 sts, for the 1st short row section X is 3 (12/4=3), then there are 4 sts more on your needles and for the 2nd short row section X=4 (16/4=4), for the 3rd X=5 (20/4=5), for the 4th X=6 and so on.)

Ridge 1: sl1 (k-wise), k to end, turn, sl1 (p-wise), k to last 2 sts, kfb, k

Ridge 2: sl1 (k-wise), k up to and including Xth st before end, w+t, k to last 2 sts, kfb, k

Ridge 3: sl1 (k-wise), k up to and including Xth st before last wrap, w+t, k to last 2 sts, kfb, k

Ridge 4: sl1 (k-wise), k up to and including Xth st before last wrap, w+t, k to last 2 sts, kfb, k

Ridge 5: sl1 (k-wise), k to end (you can pick up the wraps, but since it's garter stitch you don't have to), turn, sl1 (p-wise), k to end

During this short row section your stitch count was increased by 4 stitches.

Short Row Section - Neutral

Devide the number of on your needles stitches by 4. This is your number X for the coming short row section. (Here X should be one higher as X for the last increasing section.)
Ridge 1: sl1 (k-wise), k to end, turn, sl1 (p-wise), k to end

Ridge 2: sl1 (k-wise), k up to and including Xth st before end, w+t, k to end

Ridge 3: sl1 (k-wise), k up to and including Xth st before last wrap, w+t, k to end

Ridge 4: sl1 (k-wise), k up to and including Xth st before last wrap, w+t, k to end

Ridge 5: sl1 (k-wise), k to end (you can pick up the wraps, but since it's garter stitch you don't have to), turn, sl1 (p-wise), k to end

The number of stitches wasn't changed.

Short Row Section - Decreasing

Before knitting the section, devide the number of on your needles stitches by 4. This is your number X for the coming short row section. (X for the first decreasing short row section should be equal to X in the neutral short row section - for the following sections, X will always be one less than for the section before.)

Ridge 1: sl1 (k-wise), k to end, turn, sl1 (p-wise), k to last 3 sts, k2tog, k

Ridge 2: sl1 (k-wise), k X sts, w+t, k to last 3 sts, k2tog, k

Ridge 3: sl1 (k-wise), k up to and including the last wrapped stitch, k X sts, w+t, k to last 3 sts, k2tog, k

Ridge 4: sl1 (k-wise), k up to and including the last wrapped stitch, k X sts, w+t, k to last 3 sts, k2tog, k

Ridge 5: sl1 (k-wise), k to end (you can pick up the wraps, but since it's garter stitch you don't have to), turn, sl1 (p-wise), k to end

During this short row section your stitch count was decreased by 4 stitches.