****************************************************************************************** If a knitter casts on 45 stitches of wool onto a size 4.5mm/US 7 knitting needles to knit a 53 striped, 1,072 row, garter stitch scarf in 7 different colors at a row gauge of 36 rows to 4 inches and a stitch gauge of 5 stitches per inch.

A) How wide is the scarf going to be? In inches? In mm?

B) How long will the finished (unblocked) scarf be? In inches? In mm? In feet? in meters? in yards?Do not include the length of the fringe in your answer. (Didn't I mention there is a fringe? Oh, there be fringe.)

C) How many stitches will the knitter have knit when she completes her knitting. Do not include the cast on row but you can include the bind off row in your answer.

D) If there is approximately 184 yards of wool in a 50 gram/1.75 oz ball of yarn; how many balls of yarn will be used to knit the finished scarf?

E) Approximately how much will the finished scarf weigh? In grams? In ounces?

Bonus Question: How long before the knitter finally decides she's had enough with garter stitch knitting and decides to teach Suzi Q to knit and let Suzi finish her own damn scarf?******************************************************************************************

Let's begin with the width, which should have been the easiest to answer.

A) How wide is the scarf going to be?

Ok, so not so hard to figure out 45/5 st to the inch, should be 9".

In inches? The actual was more like 8.5.

This is how swatches fail us, knitting is not an exact science. It would probably block to 9".

In mm? approx. 23 mm


B) How long will the finished (unblocked) scarf be?

At 9 rows to an inch and 1040 rows (not 1072 as I first reported, I miscounted, sorry.) the scarf should be 115.5 inches.

In inches? Th actual came in at approx 118 inches.

In mm? approx. 301 mm

In feet? 9.6 ft, actual was 9.8 ft

In meters? 3

In yards? 3.3



Do not include the length of the fringe in your answer.
(Didn't I mention there is a fringe? Oh, there be fringe.)
The fringe was about 4" on each end which should bring the scarf to 10.5 ft long, unstretched and it's all garter stitch so it will stretch.

C) How many stitches will the knitter have knit when she completes her knitting? Do not include the cast on row but you can include the bind off row in your answer.

Okay, so 1040 rows + 1 for the cast off row x 45 stitches brings a grand total of 46,845.

(This does not include ripping back any stitches and reknitting them, which I think is negligible because I don't think I actually had to rip back (much) on this scarf.)


D) If there is approximately 184 yards of wool in a 50 gram/1.75 oz ball of yarn; how many balls of yarn will be used to knit the finished scarf?

So figuring this answer requires a little more math. It's easier to figure out if you know how many stitches to a yard.

To calculate this answer you would need to know the circumference of the needles to get an approximate length of yarn used for each stitch using a US 7 or 4.5 mm. and then dividing a yard or meter to find out how many stitches per yd/m.

OR you could measure a yard length of yarn and knit it to see how many stitches to a yard, which is what I did, 46 stitches to a yard. So with 46,845 stitches at 46 st/yd which is 1,018 yds of yarn used. 1,018 yards divided by 184 yds per ball will give you an answer of 5.5 balls of yarn.
However, I will accept seven balls of yarn because there are seven different colors of yarn.

E) Approximately how much will the finished scarf weigh?

If you have approx 184 yds to 50 grams that would give you 3.68 yards per gram or 105 yards per oz.
So 1,018 yds divided by 3.68/105 yards per gram or oz. =

In grams? 276.63 grams

In ounces? 9.69 oz



This doesn't include the weight of the fringe, which I'm sure you could calculate approximately by adding all the lengths of the fringe*, but I'm not that crazy.

I'm not saying that I'm not crazy, I'm saying that I'm not THAT crazy.

I can't tell you what the actual weight of the scarf came to be, because Suzi would not wait for me to weigh it so I will leave it up to her to weigh it and report back to me.

(Yarn weights are always approximate and subjective.

Polly, knitting acrossed the pond, at All Tangle Up, did some interesting experiments with weighing sock yarn that if you haven't seen, you should check out, quite fascinating the differences in what 50 grams is to the different sock brands.)

And finally the Bonus Question: How long before the knitter finally decides she's had enough with garter stitch knitting and decides to teach Suzi Q to knit and let Suzi finish her own damn scarf?

Although tempted at times, especially in October, I never did get too bored that I didn't want to finish it, so Suzi never did have to learn how to knit, however, I did have her help with the cutting of the fringe and grouping the tassels.

She did this mostly because she was getting impatient for it to be finished and figured (rightly so) that the fastest way to get the project done was to offer her assistance and push me a little. ******************************************************************************************

The final question that was posed to you was how long do you think it would it take me to finish knitting the scarf?