I made the red white and blue scarf for a very dear friend who’s a passionate supporter of an Australian Rules football team, the Western Bulldogs. I wanted to make him a long cosy scarf in the three team colours but not quite in the conventional way of simple stripes or just plain garter stitch. But I normally never make anything involving lots of rib because constantly switching the yarn around to do purl annoys me immensely.

I had heard it was possible to do a rib without purling, so browsed through Ravelry until I found the Scoundrel: Brioche rib scarf. Thank you Leonie Thornley for making this clever pattern from your mother’s knitting book available!

Then I had another idea. Years ago I made a roll to store all my straight needles, using lots of left over bits of yarn, and saw that when I alternated three different colours – changing the colour every row, not every second row as we often do - it had an interesting effect. So I wondered what a purl-less rib would look like if I did that too and kept repeating the same sequence of three colours. Then, due to a lovely request, I had a go at creating a 2-colour version, so now the pattern includes instructions for both.

Like all minimal knits | DESIGNED scarves this one looks way more clever and complicated than it actually is, and is easy to make. And even though it’s made with larger needles than is normal for DK/8ply, the scarf is very warm and chunky because of the nature of this purl-less rib stitch.

Skill Level Easy

Materials
The 3-colour scarf was made from three 200g balls of Bendigo Woollen Mills Luxury 8ply in the colours Prussian, Holly and Almond, which each contained 400 metres / 438 yards.

However I only used about 240 metres / 263 yards of each of the red and white yarns and about 300 metres / 328 yards of the blue, and without blocking its extremely long - measuring 19.5 cm / 7½ inches, by 234 cm / 256 inches. So I think three 100g balls of DK would achieve a perfectly practical length scarf.

The 2-colour pictured scarf was made using two 200g balls of Bendigo Woollen Mills Classic 8ply in the colours Napoleon Blue and Almond and measures 19.5cm / 7½ inches, by 190cm / 75 inches without blocking and not including the tassels.

5 mm / US 8 needles

Gauge
Doesn’t matter unless you knit very tightly or very loosely, in which case go up or down a needle size, as applicable