This one isn’t so much as a standard pattern, as a knitting recipe. It arose out of an online performance that I led last year for @platea, the online performance art group. You can knit it up to either make a scarf from the whole instructions, or pick and choose bits to make into hats or wristers, as I did (see photos).

If you’d like to know a little more about the background to the project, please do check out the article on my blog.

For five days in February 2010 I devised and led a knitting performance on Twitter called #plateaknit. Instructions were tweeted by the @platea online performance collective for others to interpret to the best of their ability in knitting, crochet or any other medium of their choice. Some of the performers were knitters, some were not, so you will see that while there are a number of typical knitting abbreviations, there are plenty of others that are a little different. This scarf is made up from the entire instruction feed of the performance. I feel that it is more of a recipe than a pattern because you, as the original performers will all interpret the instructions in your own way. Everybody will come out with something different at the end. You can read more background information about the #plateaknit project over at ingridmurnane.com.

This pattern uses aran weight yarn and 5mm needles. Tension is not overly important as it is a scarf. I used Rowan aran yarn for the main green colour with some Cascade 220 for the other stripes. Some I even used two strands of sock weight yarn held together for some parts. Just use whatever scraps you have to make it interesting, but try to make it all tone together well, overall.

These instructions make a scarf about 34cm wide. As a rough guide, the full recipe makes a scarf about 92cm long (depending on how many times you repeat some of the instructions). You will need to repeat them twice to make it about 185 long.