Ojos de Bruja Scarf

Something warm, yet light for spring or summer evenings – easy to knit but with a certain “lacy” optic, the Ojos de Bruja scarf is the perfect accessory. It is knitted from side to side and all in garter stitch.

It is great for using the beautiful yarn in the wildest colors that has been in your stash for so long. Due to its short row construction and varying width, colors will be distributed nicely and color pooling isn’t very probable.




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



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Fellow raveler mariarosaknits (from Fili & Colori - The Knitting Room) has written an Italian version of this pattern - it is available here.
She also made a YouTube video to explain the techniques (with "subtitles" both in english and italian) - here on YouTube. Thank you, this is great!

A Danish translation of this pattern was written by Marianne Holmen from strikkeglad.dk - it is available here.

Materials

• about 210 grams of fingering weight yarn, however, the pattern is written in a way that it can be adapted to any yarn weight (therefore, gauge doesn’t really matter).
  The yarn that I used here (Jitterbug 400 by Colinette - colorway Jamboree) is listed on Ravelry as a fingering weight yarn - however, it has only 400 yards to 150 grams (whereas all the fingering yarn I used before has 400 yards to 100 grams) - that gave me a scarf of about 175 cm length, and 42 cm width at its widest point.
• 3.75 mm needles

Techniques

• Short rows with double stitches (German short rows, t+p): when you turn, bring yarn to the front and pull it back so that a sort of "double-stitch" is created, then knit back as usual - when you have to knit the double-stitch, make sure to knit it as one stitch (see also this YouTube video); this method has the advantage the no picking up of stitches is necessary. In the pattern, this stitch will be called t+p (turn and pull).
• Backwards Loop CO: See this YouTube-Video from planetpurl.

• Both techniques (German short rows and backwards loop CO) are shown in mariarosaknits YouTube-video.

Instructions

CO12
Row 0 (WS): sl1, k to end

Increasing Section

For each section, you will have to calculate a number X, that tells the distance between the "t+p's . It is calculated as
    X = (number of stitches when beginning the section PLUS 3) DIVIDED BY 5

This looks more complicated than it actually is, for the first section X is 3 = (12+3)/5 ... and X will increase by one for every knitted section (i.e. for the second section X is 4, for the third section X is 5 etc.), because the stitch count increases by 5 for each section.

Rows 1, 2 (RS, WS): sl1, kfb, k to end // turn // sl1, k to end
Rows 3, 4 (RS, WS): sl1, kfb, k to end // turn // sl1, k to end
Rows 5, 6 (RS, WS): sl1, kfb, k to end // turn // sl1, k to end

Rows 7, 8 (RS, WS): sl1, k to Xth st before end, t+p, k to end
Rows 9, 10 (RS, WS): sl1, k to Xth st before last wrap t+p, k to end
Rows 11, 12 (RS, WS): sl1, k to end // turn // sl1, k to last 10 sts, BO5, k5
Rows 13, 14 (RS, WS): sl1, k4 // turn (do not wrap) // sl1, k4
Rows 15, 16 = Rows 13, 14
Rows 17, 18 = Rows 13, 14
Rows 19, 20 = Rows 13, 14
Rows 21, 22 (RS, WS): sl1, k4, CO7 (backwards-loop CO), k to end // turn // sl1, k to last before CO, ktbl, k7, ktbl, k to end
Rows 23, 24 (RS, WS): sl1, k to 2*Xth st before end, t+p, k to end
     ["2*X" = X multiplied by 2]
Rows 25, 26 (RS, WS): sl1, k to Xth st before end, t+p, k to end

Row 27 (RS): sl1, k to end
Rows 28, 29 (WS, RS): sl1, k to Xth st before end, t+p, k to end
Rows 30, 31 (WS, RS): sl1, k to Xth st before last wrap t+p, k to end
Rows 32, 33 (WS, RS): sl1, k to Xth st before last wrap t+p, k to end
Rows 34, 35 (WS, RS): sl1, k to Xth st before last wrap t+p, k to end
Row 36 (WS): sl1: k to end

Repeat increasing section until you have reached about half of the desired length of your scarf.
(I knitted a total 13 increasing sections.)
Then knit the middle section once.

Middle Section

For the middle section X is calculated as for the increasing section - it will be one higher than it was for the last increasing section.

Rows 1, 2 (RS, WS): sl1, kfb, k to end // turn // sl1, k to end
Rows 3, 4 (RS, WS): sl1, kfb, k to end // turn // sl1, k to end
Rows 5, 6 (RS, WS): sl1, kfb, k to end // turn // sl1, k to end

Rows 7, 8 (RS, WS): sl1, k to Xth st before end, t+p, k to end
Rows 9, 10 (RS, WS): sl1, k to Xth st before last turn, t+p, k to end
Rows 11, 12 (RS, WS): sl1, k to end // turn // sl1, k to last 10 sts, BO5, k5
Rows 13, 14 (RS, WS): sl1, k4 // turn (do not wrap) // sl1, k4
Rows 15, 16 = Rows 13, 14
Rows 17, 18 = Rows 13, 14
Rows 19, 20 = Rows 13, 14
Rows 21, 22 (RS, WS): sl1, k4, CO5 (backwards-loop CO), k to end // turn // sl1, k to last before CO, ktbl, k5, ktbl, k to end
Rows 23, 24 (RS, WS): sl1, k to 2*Xth st before end, t+p, k to end
Rows 25, 26 (RS, WS): sl1, k to Xth st before end, t+p, k to end

Rows 27, 28 (RS, WS): sl1, ssk, k to end // turn // sl1, k to end
Rows 29, 30 (RS, WS): sl1, ssk, k to end // turn // sl1, k to end
Rows 31, 32 (RS, WS): sl1, ssk, k to end // turn // sl1, k to end

After finishing the middle section (once), knit start with the decreasing sections.

Decreasing Section

The number X for this section is the number of stitches minus 2, and that result divided by 5.
For the first decreasing section, it will be as high as for the last increasing section - decreasing by one for each section.

Row 1 (RS): sl1, k to end
Rows 2, 3 (WS, RS): sl1, k to 4*Xth st before end, t+p, k to end
Rows 4, 5 (WS, RS): sl1, k up to and including last wrapped stitch, k X sts, t+p, k to end
Rows 6, 7 (WS, RS): sl1, k up to and including last wrapped stitch, k X sts, t+p, k to end
Rows 8, 9 (WS, RS): sl1, k up to and including last wrapped stitch, k X sts, t+p, k to end
Row 10 (WS): sl1: k to end

Rows 11, 12 (RS, WS): sl1, k to Xth st before end, t+p, k to end
Rows 13, 14 (RS, WS): sl1, k to Xth st before last wrap t+p, k to end
Rows 15, 16 (RS, WS): sl1, k to end // turn // sl1, k to last 12 sts, BO7, k5
Rows 17, 18 (RS, WS): sl1, k4 // turn (do not wrap) // sl1, k4
Rows 19, 20 = Rows 17, 18
Rows 21, 22 = Rows 17, 18
Rows 23, 24 = Rows 17, 18
Rows 25, 26 (RS, WS): sl1, k4, CO5 (backwards-loop CO), k to end // turn // sl1, k to last before CO, ktbl, k5, ktbl, k to end
Rows 27, 28 (RS, WS): sl1, k to 2 *Xth st before end, t+p, k to end
Rows 29, 30 (RS, WS): sl1, k to Xth st before end, t+p, k to end

Rows 31, 32 (RS, WS): sl1, ssk, k to end // turn // sl1, k to end
Rows 33, 34 (RS, WS): sl1, ssk, k to end // turn // sl1, k to end
Rows 35, 36 (RS, WS): sl1, ssk, k to end // turn // sl1, k to end

Repeat decreasing section as many times as you knitted the increasing section (there should be only 12 sts on your needles now). Bind off.

Weave in ends and block.

This pattern has been featured on the Knitting Love Monthly Link Party! Thank you!