Manderley Scarf

Knitting for pleasure and the shifting colours of yarn

Jan 23, 2026

My first finish of the year and it’s a totally frivolous knit.

I saw the gorgeous Manderley Scarf, by the equally gorgeous Ami Lowden (@andotherknits) pop up on my Insta feed over Christmas and although I admired her pretty pictures and very cute design, I resisted temptation at first. A seed had been planted though and when I started catching up on Jules’ (@SewSweetViolet) vlogmas and saw her planning and making a version, I quite quickly caved.

I don’t need a scarf, I can’t even really think of any justification for making a scarf, but I loved the scallops, the opportunity for colour play and the lure of the simple garter bumps. So I made it for the sheer hell of it really.

Although I was looking forward to playing with a lovely yarn colours I didn’t have a smooth ride in my selections. I wanted a nice gradient and I originally planned to start and end with the same colour yarn. I had two hanks of ‘Fairy Lights’ that I was planning to bookend my other colours with.

The first spanner in the works came when I started winding up the yarns. Choices that looked like they would work together when the twisted hanks sat side by side, suddenly didn’t look right once they were wound into cakes and my two skeins of ‘Fairy Lights’ looked so different that the plan for sitting one at either end didn’t make a whole lot of sense any more.

So I made a few yarny switches, rewound the swaps and then set off with my new colours. Things went fairly smoothly once I started. It’s a nice easy pattern and once the initial scallops are done it’s really plain sailing. Ami is a wonderful pattern writer and always gives you all the little extra bits of information and guidance which make knitting her patterns a breeze.

The final colour palette. (* Unfortunately these yarn dyers are no longer available.)

I did have a few moments hesitation after I started knitting. Some of the colours, that looked one way in a hank, another way when wound and somehow different again when knit, made me pause for thought again. I ideally wanted something softer between ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’ and ‘Winter’ for a smoother slide from the pink to the paler shades, but I didn’t have anything that fit the bill exactly but ‘French Earl Grey’ was the closest and is a glorious colour, so that was a last minute switch.

I also found the greens in ‘Winter’ stood out far more than I thought they would. It’s also an utterly glorious colour, but when knitted up next to the pink it seemed to emphasise the green tones all the more, which I wasn’t at all sure about. It’s such a precious yarn (dyed by dear friend Sam) that I did contemplate ripping back and saving it for something else, but decided to stick with it in the end.

It’s unlikely that I’d ever knit this again, as I couldn’t really justify making it this time round. But if I ever do, I’d like to remind myself that in a project like this, where the yarns have to blend in one solid piece, I should pay a little more attention to the weight and fibre choices. The ‘Fairy Lights’ is a plumper yarn and feels heavier than the others as a result. Also ‘Winter’ has some silk in, which makes it little less firm and gives a softer drape than the others. All things I should have known, things I do know in fact, but I suppose my focus on the colours made them slip my mind. Ahh well, you live and learn…. in theory! Luckily I don’t think it affected the outcome too much and after all, this is just for me.

So the end result was a little different than I intended, but I think it came out ok. It was a fun and easy knit, it was another great stash buster and those scallops are just the cutest.