Skip to main content

Summer Shawl

I have been pretty good about busting my stash this year.  The only new yarn purchased in 2017 has been the variegated lace to complete the Waiting for Rain shawl, the souvenir possum yarn purchased in New Zealand (to be revealed soon) and an inexpensive Australian 8 ply weight wool yarn purchased in Wisconsin.  The focus this year in stash busting has been on using up the DK, fingering and lace weight yarns that inexplicably found their way to my homes.  To that end I purchased Stephen West's Shawlscape class from Craftsy to pick up some good ideas, but unlike Stephen, my design skills are less developed so I continue to look for patterns.  Though as you will see alternations can be made to suit my whims.

 Summer Shawl by STASH Lounge in Ravelry is a simple, asymmetrical scarf/shawl that uses two colours in a rather clever way.

Photo credit to STASH Lounge
 The blocks of relatively solid colours all done in garter stitch are broken up with stripes.  That scalloped edging is added after the shawl is cast off using single and double crochet stitches. It was mindless knitting that carries a certain impact due to the colours.

There were four skeins, two in a colour called Curry and two in Thistle of Isager yarn in my stash.  My selected colours are both muted and earthy so a patch of left over turquoise wool (the hank band is long gone) was added for the needed pop of colour.  Here's my version.



Yup in Minneapolis at the moment
There were two alterations.  My yarn was DK and in order to get the type of drape in the fabric I wanted size 5 or 3.75 mm needles were used.  The drop in needle size caused a need to add 50% more to each of the pattern segments in order to get an acceptable size.  For instance, instead of the first segment increasing to 42 stitches my version increased to 63 stitches.  And in the second stripe section I knit 12 stripes instead of the patterns 8 stripes and so on throughout the entire pattern.

Summer Shawl does not have a designated future owner, but it has occurred to me a male could wear it as easily as a woman because the colours are so subtle.  My only regret with this project is only two of the four skeins were used so another pattern will need to found to use the remaining yarn.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Anatomy of a Sock

I've been knitting socks for a relatively short time.  One of the disconcerting things for me as I started following patterns for socks is the pattern designer assumes the knitter (in this case that would be me) knows all the parts of a sock.  So I thought I'd devote a post to improve my own knowledge about the anatomy of a sock and maybe some of you will learn something about the humble yet necessary sock as well. Here's the names of the parts of the foot as I know them. #49 ankle, #50 heel, #51, instep, #52 ball, #53 big toe, #54 toe, #55 little toe, #56 toenail. There are some parts more important for this discussion; first the heel of a foot is generally used to refer to the entire C-shape from the ankle to the instep.  Speaking of the instep, it refers to that curve near the bottom of the foot.  And what seems to be missing in the design above is the sole which generally refers to the bottom of the foot in total or plantar aspect in more technical terms...
10 comments
Read more

Gosling's Meme and Knitting

What is a meme, you may first ask? Well Dr. Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist, came up with the idea in the late 1970's and stated something like: a meme is to a society what a gene is to a human. Both are an element or unit that can be replicated or passed from one individual to another. During the Internet age memes can be easily shared, replicated or otherwise passed on to another. Recent examples can be found on Gawker . Memes can include piano playing cats, a honey badger, the Call Me Maybe phenomenon and so on. The political campaign in the U.S. helped fuel memes using some of the most unusual statements like, "binders of women" and "you didn't build that." A few memes have staying power but most have a relatively short life span. Gosling's meme related to knitting has been around for some time; so when I again saw another post about him recently, it was time to figure out the origin. Ryan Gosling is a Canadian actor born in Onta...
Post a Comment
Read more

Yarn Usage II: Crochet vs. Knit

All four swatches were made.  Each is 6.25" or 15.875 cm square; each prepared with the same sized yarn and needles or hook.  It took 25 stitches to get the appropriate width for the knit swatches and only 20 stitches for both of the crocheted squares.  That already says something, but I'll get to it in a minute.  (Don't know what I'm talking about here?  Check out this post first.) Unfortunately, you'll just have to trust me that four swatches were prepared and that they were all the same size.  In the excitement to get to measuring and weighing of the swatches, no photographic evidence was taken.  Luckily for me the results of this research doesn't have to be reviewed by a jury of my peer.  This blog post will be the sum and total of where this information is published. The remains of my four swatches What can be shared, however, are the balls of yarn rewound after the weighing and measuring was completed.  You will note the size ...
9 comments
Read more