Gryffindor Scarf

I've wanted to take up a new hobby for a while and I've also been coveting Harry Potter scarves for years, so knitting was an obvious choice.

Although I am a Slytherin (according to Pottermore, which I regard as the only 'true' way of knowing which House you belong to), I've always been more drawn to the colours of the Gryffindor scarves so I decided that this would be my first knitting project. There are two designs of scarf in the Harry Potter films:

1) The wide striped scarf with tassels seen in Philosopher's Stone and Chamber of Secrets:

2) The narrow striped design seen from Prisoner of Azkaban onwards:

I prefer the former, and as I made it in December, it seemed a lot more Christmassy than the later design.

There are lots of different knitting and crocheting patterns out there for making a Harry Potter scarf (and even more for a generic striped scarf) but most seemed a bit too advanced for me so in the end I decided to make my own- very basic- pattern.

Materials used:

• Red wool- Yarnfair double knit in shade 034
• Yellow wool- Sidar Country Style double knit in shade 0612
• UK size 6 needles
• A crochet hook (for the tassels)

Method:

1. Cast on 32 stitches in the red wool
2. Knit for 40 rows. I just used the basic garter stitch as this was quick and easy for me to do as a beginner.
3. Change to yellow wool
4. Knit for another 40 rows
5. Continue until you have 17 stripes- you should begin and end with a red stripe
6. Tidy up the loose threads by weaving them into the scarf
7. Create and add the tassels. The article here outlines how to do this better than I can. I made 9 tassels- 5 red and 4 yellow- and made sure that the first and last tassel were both in the red wool.

I found that these videos were really helpful for teaching me how to knit, so I'd recommend them to any other absolute beginners who are interested in starting knitting.

Here's an 'in-production' photo of the scarf:


                         

The finished product:

                                  

                         

                         

It's not perfect (I wasn't really sure how to retrieve dropped stitches and my knitting was a bit irregular) but I'm very happy with it as a first attempt. I showed it to my Nan who has been knitting her whole life and she said it was very impressive, which is just about the best praise I can imagine.


                          

Not sure if Harry likes it though...