The Dummy Clap Shawl

Tena's Clapotis scarf inspired me. It is so light and lovely I thought if I could find just the right yarn I might be able to make one for myself. I took time to study the pattern and felt fairly confident I could do it.

A completed Clapotis that is NOT Tena's

Additionally I have a stash and located this cone of Eastlake yarn from Yarnia. There are 437 yards/400 meters of a combination of cotton-rayon, bamboo and acrylic threads. This combination makes it relatively light weight for a DK yarn, plus it is soft and drapes beautifully. As with all Yarnia yarns, the threads are not twisted together meaning this yarn uses four strands that have to be carefully knit so no one strand is missed. But it is the colours of lime and sage greens, bright blue and a variegated brown from light tan to dark brown that seemed to be calling me to make something with it. It was of course these colours that caused me to purchase it.

Meet Eastlake

I wanted to use this project to counter balance the more technically difficult Viaduct shawl I am working on as well. So upon further thinking about it I decided to not make Clapotis but instead make the Dummy Clap shawl designed by Anna Maliszewski shown here.

A completed Dummy Clap shawl

As you can see it has the open weave of Clapotis, but it is so much easier to make. Clapotis has dropped stitches running diagonally across the scarf meaning the knitter has to follow a chart. The Dummy Clap is completely knit using stockinette stitches and the magic is done by dropping stitches as the shawl is cast off the needles. From my POV this was a better fit for the purposes of starting this shawl meaning it is totally and completely mindless knitting.

The little swatch I made to determine how much the stitches will open up

So I did a tiny little swatch to see how much the shawl would expand with the dropped stitches; amazingly it almost doubles in width. So I adjusted the number of stitches cast on and starting knitting away. Here's what I have so far.

It is just a mass of stockinette so far

You and I will have to wait for the magic because it is so delayed. I think it will be great fun to drop stitches and then force them to continue to drop throughout the shawl. You won't see this again until it is complete, because we both know photos of a growing length of stockinette is not very exciting.

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