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This fisherman’s rib scarf knitting pattern is super quick and easy to knit. It’s great for gift knitting or to make a cozy, squishy scarf for yourself.
I made this scarf for my daughter’s teacher, who is often on the dropoff line in the mornings and looked like she could use a new scarf.
I used it as an opportunity to try Caron Colorama O’Go yarn, which is billed as tangle free and comes in lots of great colors for easy mixing or color blocking.
What You’ll Need
- 2 skeins Caron Colorama O’Go (I used the Blue Mustang colorway) or about 450 yards bulky weight yarn of your choice
- one pair size US 10.5/6.5mm knitting needles
- yarn needle or crochet hook for weaving in ends
Gauge
Gauge is not critical but I got 12.5 stitches and 12.5 rows per 4 inches/10cm (a little more than 3 stitches and rows per inch/2.5 cm) in Fisherman’s Rib.
Size
You can make your scarf as long as you like. Mine is 8 inches/20 cm wide and 80 inches/2 meters long.
How to Knit the Fisherman’s Rib Scarf
Cast on 23 stitches.
Set up row: Knit 1. *Purl 1, knit 1. Repeat from * across.
Row 1: Purl 1. *Knit into the stitch below, purl 1. Repeat from * across.
Row 2: Knit 1. *Purl 1, knit into the stitch below. Repeat from * across.
Repeat rows 1 and 2 until scarf is desired length. Bind off loosely.
How to Work Fisherman’s Rib
Fisherman’s Rib is an easy knitting stitch pattern that looks somewhat similar to brioche knitting but is a lot easier for most people. I like it because I can do it while watching TV and don’t really have to look at what I’m doing, which isn’t always the case with brioche.
The key component of Fisherman’s Rib is knitting into the stitch below the stitch on the needle. Look at your work and you will see the loop of the stitch that is on the needle and the V of the stitch from the previous row just below it.
To knit into the stitch below, put your right-hand needle into the middle of that V from front to back. Form a knit stitch as you normally would and pull the stitch off the needle as normal.
This makes the knit stitches much more raised and pronounced than standard ribbing, and give some of the texture and squishiness of brioche stitch.
Fisherman’s Rib is worked on multiples of 2 plus 1 stitches so you can alter this scarf or use it in other projects so long as that number is maintained.
Using Colorama
Caron Colorama from Yarnspirations is one of their yarns designed to be tangle free. It’s presented in a semicircular shape, which I found a little weird to work with (especially with cats in the house; it was very attractive to them).
The yarn is presented in blocks of color so you can unwind each color individually and work with them in a different order if you want. You can mix colorways or just work it as it goes.
For my Fisherman’s Rib scarf, I decided to work the colors in order from the first skein (ball? blob? I don’t know what to call it) and then do the opposite for the second one.
This makes the ends of the scarf the same color and allowed me to compensate for the fact that the break in my first thing of yarn was in the middle of the color.
It makes for one big block of (in this case) white at the middle of the scarf, but I like it.
Despite the weird presentation, I enjoyed working with this yarn. It’s soft for an acrylic and I think the use of Fisherman’s Rib with it was really nice. I kind of want to try a sweater with it next!
