How to Knit a Scrunchie, The Pepper Way

  • Posted byby Pepper
  • 4 minute read
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I’m a child of the 80s, which means I will always love a good scrunchie. I’ve knitted a lot of them over the years using different construction methods, but my favorite by far is the one I’ll share today: a long vertical tube knitted directly around a hair elastic.

After a lot of trial and error, I finally feel ready to share my own scrunchie-knitting tutorial with you. Be kind!

This construction looks the most like a classic fabric scrunchie… the kind we all wore around our wrists every day, even despite the totally weird tan lines.

How to Knit Scrunchies
The purple scrunchie in the top right of the photo is a more popular construction method where you knit a very long flat rectangle and seam it around the elastic after the fact. I included it so you can see the difference between that type on the ones I am making in this tutorial.

I’ve knitted dozens of scrunchies like this, and my technique has evolved over time. I originally used the process I describe in this older post from 2022, but since then, I’ve zeroed in on my favorite supplies and tweaked the techniques to get great results and make the process less annoying.

The Tutorial:

This video is thorough (read: it’s long), and, as a bonus, you could probably invent a new drinking game where you do a shot every time I say the word “fiddly.” But I did my best to cover every step carefully! If you don’t want to watch the whole thing straight through, I’ve included key timestamps in the written instructions below so you can jump around.

Supplies 

  • Fingering Weight Yarn: You’ll need about 40-50 yards of sock yarn. A 10g mini skein should be plenty. [1:56]
  • Large Nylon Hair Elastic: I like the Kitsch brand hair elastics for the base of my scrunchies. They’re big enough to easily flip the needles through and they really hold their shape. Other types of hair ties have broken or stretched out on me, but these have been the best. [2:42]
  • U.S. Size 4 Flexible DPNs: I recommend knitting these on Addi Flexi Flips. You can also use circular needles, but the flexible DPNs have been a scrunchie-knitting game-changer for me. You don’t want to attempt this on regular DPNs. [3:36]
  • 8” of stitch saver cord (2mm rubber tubing) and a toggle lock: These are really a must-have for my method. It turns a very fiddly technique into something much more manageable. (Fiddly! Take a shot!) I recommend this bundle pack of the cord and toggles from Amazon. Be sure to get rubber tubing, not silicone! If you’re not a fan of Amazon, you can find this at your LYS under the brand name Purl Strings and you can pick up toggles at a craft store. [4:21]

How to Knit the Scrunchie

  • Provisionally cast on 20 stitches over stitch saver cord. [5:59] If I’m moving too fast, Laura Nelkin has a great provisional cast-on tutorial that will help.
  • Knit the first row of the provisional cast-on flat. Then divide the stitches in half and sandwich the hair elastic inside before joining to work in the round, encasing the elastic. [9:25]
  • Knit a few rows in the round, flipping the needles through the hair tie as you work. You’re working stockinette stitch, so every round is just knits. I demonstrate how to flip the needles around the 10:12 timestamp. If you’re knitting with circular needles instead of the Flexi Flips, I show you how to do that flip at the end of the video, around 29:07.
  • Secure the yarn tail and cord ends with the toggle: Check out the tutorial to see how I do this at the 11:00 mark.
  • Keep knitting until the tube fully covers the elastic in its fully stretched state. You’ll need to untwist the work a bit as you go, which is normal.
  • Put the provisional cast-on stitches onto a spare needle. [16:52] This is where that rubber tubing comes in handy! Reposition any backward stitches if needed.
  • Graft the provisional cast-on edge to the cast-off edge using Kitchener. [20:05] This is going to be slightly different than grafting a sock toe, because you’re joining a provisional edge to a cast-off edge vs joining two cast-off edges together, so you want to offset the stitches a bit. If you get confused, just do it the normal way. (It’s just a scrunchie and no one will notice).
  • Tie a small knot with the yarn ends and pull the tails inside the scrunchie to hide them. [27:00] If you end up with a little gap, you can close it with duplicate stitch. I attempted to demonstrate that in the video, but mine turned out nicely enough that it wasn’t necessary. (I left my blooper in there just for giggles).
  • Fin!

I hope you love making and wearing handknit scrunchies as much as I do! They’re a great way to use up leftover yarn. They also make excellent “purse projects” so you can carry one around and knit it by bit while you’re out and about. And once you’ve made a few, I promise the process becomes much less fiddly. (Shot!)

P.S. Congratulations if you watched the whole tutorial video! If you were taking notes, you may have noticed that I promised to give you a link to the blacklight-activated speckled yarn I was using, and I said I’d give you a tutorial on how to offset the stitches when using Kitchener to graft a cast-on edge to a cast-off edge.

Whelp, I searched high and low but couldn’t find a tutorial demonstrating this exactly. Here is the closest I could find, where she is doing it on a flat piece of ribbed knitting, but it captures the general idea.

And, sadly, Rainbow Peak closed up shop, but here is a link to an Etsy search to help you find someone else who uses UV-reactive dye. Let me know if you find one you like!