Way back when I was starting this blog, I did a post on an entrelac scarf. I tend to be not a very bold or adventurous knitter, but I stumbled across a great entrelac tutorial on the Knitty Otter’s blog. I am a very visual learner and this spelled out the entrelac steps in no uncertain photos. It was great — even I could follow them!
Once hooked on entrelac, I made all sorts of experiments but tended to come back to scarves. They are easy, pleasant to work the block rows back and forth, and certainly conversation starters when sitting in the vet’s office or the coffee shop and people what to know what the heck you are making.
After some trial and error, I determined that Crystal Palace Taos yarn works great for entrelac. This is a scarf I made as a Christmas present. It is Crystal Palace Taos in “Desert Blooms.”
One addition — I added a row of glass bead to the cast on and cast off rows and this weighted the fringed ends nicely.
I was so happy with the colors on this — it seemed just the thing for a snowy winter’s day. If only I’d known when I was working on it exactly HOW MUCH snow was in the offing!
Of course, no good deed goes unpunished. I was just patting myself on the back for finishing this scarf before Christmas, when I received a bit of rushed request. A good friend of mine who has certainly done many nice things for me, and who was the recipient of last year’s blue entrelac scarf at Christmastime, was in a predicament: She had no clue what to get for her very elderly mother, and the one and only thing the mother admired was …. the blue entrelac scarf.
Well, I couldn’t let such admiration go unnoticed. The only proviso was that Mom did NOT get the exact same color scheme as the blue scarf. Instead, Mom got Crystal Palace Taos “Painted Desert.”
My husband picked the color out. I narrowed the choice down to three and asked his opinion. Not only did he pick this, but I afterwards realized I had bought two lots of this color at two different times, so I guess I really liked it, too!
A slight innovation on this one. Compare the sides from the Desert Blooms scarf to this one. Notice that this one has straighter sides? I cast on 240 stitches and knitted this one in six rows, instead of casting on 18 and knitting in who-knows-how-many rows. Tricksy, huh?
The Wool Merchant's Daughter 
I’ve been trying to figure out how you made it, with the colors looking so randomly placed. I want to make one similar to this, rather like a random scrap quilt, only with new yarn, I’ve no idea how to randomize it. Should I cut it all into pieces? Randomly grabbing a piece as I go?
Your scarves are lovely!
Update: after investigating chroma yarn, I see how it works!