A Hole in My Heart...

…and a mangled cookie cutter. My plan was to fast-track the heart cutting by tapping a shaped cookie cutter through the scarf. The felted was too bouncy. And did you know a cookie cutter collapses really easily when you hit it with a hammer?

I made this scarf just a few days before Christmas. Like most stitchers, it's best to start holiday scarves long before that holiday arrives. This prevents the 11th-hour scramble to finish a gift on time.

Did you just snort? Me, too. It was just a fluke that I started early on this one.

I had a hankering for felting. I'm going to stop here because, although I'm not a stickler for specifics, I am about this term. Felting is packing loose fibers together. What us stitchers do with our knitting and crocheting is fulling.

It took a while to develop a nice ratio of red to yellow rows for "Heartless."

Click here to download the instructions for "Heartless".

Texture: This Girl’s Best Friend

I'm a texture girl. Colorwork is wonderful, but given a choice between, say, entrelac and Fair Isle, I'll go with the entrelac every time.

So it's no surprise that I went on a bobbles jag two years ago. Sometimes you just have to get these things out of your system. It wasn't until I entered my 30s that I truly understood that this was the motivation for many artists who create a series of work on a theme or technique.

Anyhow, back to today's scarf. It's a rather simple neck warmer that's just long enough to wrap around your neck and tuck into the front of your coat.

The bobbles add interest, and a knit loop at one corner wraps over a button on the opposite corner to keep the "Drops" scarf from slipping when worn.

The pattern includes a photo tutorial for a bobble.

Click here to download today's pattern, "Drops".

Twist and Shout

Do you own a cable needle? Or are you a cable-hater? Sure, the look is gorgeous, but sliding stitches onto the cable needle and then knitting them off after the twist bugs some people. Then there's another gang that avoids cables because they're bulky.

Today's scarf, "No-Cable Cable" overcomes these hurdles, with its two-stitch cable. It is so easy.

Click here for the instructions for the "No-Cable Cable".

Trending...

As a designer, it's important to keep up with trends: colors, textures, hemlines...the whole nine yards. Knowing doesn't mean the stitcher’s work has to be trendy, but it helps to know that, say, a certain color scarf won't appeal because it clashes with the color of winter coats on the rack that season.

After thirty-mumble-mumble years in the home arts, I'm noticing that the stitching and fashion worlds are colliding more often. Have you noticed all the super-bulky knitted cowls appearing on runways these days?

It's a fabulous look. But I'm cold sheep. And there's so little yardage on a ball of super bulky that buying enough can be an issue.

Here's my solution: triple strand. Like double stranding, all you're doing a holding strands together and working them as one. That's what today's featured scarf, "Triple Take", is about.

So, check out how to do it and download today's pattern, "Triple Take" here.