It’s that time of year when the weather turns cooler and stores can’t decide if they’re celebrating Halloween, Thanksgiving or Christmas. As the jeans and boots are being dragged out from the back of the closet, accessorize your fall look by adding a cute, homemade scarf.

Grab Your Yarn and Needles

The first step to making a scarf is picking out the kind of yarn you want. Stores offer a variety of yarn bundles, or skeins, in different colors, textures and thicknesses.

After, buy your needles. Knitting needles can be metal, plastic or wood and are sized based on the thickness of the yarn. The labeling on the skein’s paper sleeve will tell you what size to purchase.

Michaels is an arts and crafts store that offers Red Heart Soft Essentials Stripes Yarn for $3. This skein will make a gorgeous tricolored scarf. The yarn is thinner, so you’ll need six millimeter needles.

Bernat Blanket Stitch ‘n Win Yarn can also be found at Michaels for $8. This roll is twice the length of the first one, and has a soft, velvet texture. These thicker fibers will need eight millimeter needles.

Walmart has a selection of skeins that you can buy while you’re grocery shopping. Lion Brand Yarn Hometown USA Anchorage Ice is a black and white yarn that will go with any outfit. For $2.97, this thicker material will make a bulkier scarf and use eight millimeter needles.

The thicker the yarn, the less time it will take to finish your scarf.

Sarah LaLond/Northern Star

Knit!

There are three main parts of knitting: casting on, knitting and casting off.

How to Knit a Scarf for Beginners Step By Step is a helpful YouTube video that teaches you how to knit. It’s convenient to be able to pause the video or rewind for clarification.

Casting on is the start of any knitting project. For a scarf, you need to make a knot and then 30 to 40 loops. These will become your stitches, and will make sure that your scarf wide enough.

Knitting is the process of moving a row of stitches from one needle to the other. Slipping the first stitch, transferring a stitch from one needle to the other without knitting it, gives the scarf clean edges.

Casting off, slipping the stitches over each other, is the final step in making your scarf.

To check if your scarf is ready is to wear, hold the ends of the scarf in different hands. If you can comfortably straighten out your arms all the way without them bending, then your scarf is ready!

via GIPHY