Shawl – Hopefully Creative

Portia Shawl

Three triangles together for a geometric scarf.

When trawling Ravelry for more patterns to diminish my stash of yarn, I found this interesting shaped shawl: Portia Shawl by Corrie Purdum. It’s basically three triangles together to form three quarters of square. The claim is that because of those points at the front, it stays over the shoulders well. With the summer happening, I haven’t been able to fully test this, but I expect it to be true.

Portia Shawl in gray and green on a mannequin

For the yarn, I chose Krypton sock yarn (100% merino), dyed unsaturated black with dark green in March of 2023. I actually have another ball of this, and this shawl didn’t finish a full ball, so if anyone has suggestions for a project that uses 100 g + a little bit extra, let me know!

Portia Shawl in gray and green being blocked on light blue blocking mats

Detail of eyelet pattern of Portia Shawl in gray and green

The pattern is straight forward and once you get the hang of it, it’s fairly easy to memorize. For fun, I added one extra repeat in the big central diamond shape. The pattern indicates that this scarf needs to be blocked to within an inch of its life. I didn’t manage to stretch it as far as I should’ve. I’m unsure how anyone would manage. I did enjoy playing with my new blocking wires, it does make it easier when you have a meter wire instead of 30-40 cm.

I made a choice with the blocking that the back edge would be blocked to little points, while the ‘sides’ would be blocked straight. This results in different kinds of edges which I think is interesting. I also like that the green randomly appears every now and again. I’m now just waiting for fall for some better shawl wearing times!

Seas Shawl

Thick and thin yarn to make some waves.

In my last big undyed yarn purchase, I included 10 skeins of ‘Thick and Thin DK’-weight yarn. It’s single ply but it varies in thickness along the length and therefore has an interesting sort of effect. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it, but I was intrigued by how it worked. So I set off to dye it with some soft yellow and green sprinkles on 3 June 2023.

Once it was dry, I had to figure out what to actually do with it. I tried several patterns until I ran across the Seas Shawl by Puff Updater. It seemed like a fun, slightly involved pattern that wouldn’t mind the uneven nature of the yarn. You can still lightly see the waves made by increases and decreases, hence the name, I guess. I started on July 23 and finished it on November 19. It traveled with me a lot, together with an ever more crumpled piece of paper with the instructions on it.

After blocking and pinning out some points, it turned out a bit smaller than I hoped. I knew I would never really wear it as it was. So I decided to ask one of my colleagues if she was interested and it has now found a nice new home. The end result is only a small part of what I enjoy about knitting. It’s mainly the relaxing nature of knits and purls that keep me coming back to the needles.

Grey-diation Shawl

Adding some details to stave off endless repetition.

To be honest, I don’t remember much about this shawl. I finished it a couple of months ago and from what I can recall, the knitting was very boring. However, it does have good colours, grey, white and black go with everything! And I have worn it out a few times since, so lets try to recap anyway.

My Ravelry notes indicate that I started this new shawl on July 1st, 2023 and finished it on 11 October 2023. Not too bad of a turn around. The pattern is Aranea by Erika Wine and I later incorporated Asscher by Christina Danaee into it because I was so bored. The yarn was the ‘grey-diation‘ yarn dyed in December 2022. The pattern is fairly simple, the only thing to remember is to make the ‘spokes’ by effectively knitting i-cord along the edges and three other spines. In the beginning, a stitch is increased on each side of each spoke every fourth row. Once you pass 40 stitches between two spokes, you start increasing every other row.

This is a lot of knitting stockinette and for some reason, my yarn didn’t want to run out. The shawl is supposed to end when there were 80 stitches between the spokes, but I still had a lot left when I hit those 80 stitches. So at some point, I wanted something, anything else to do but knit-stitches for an eternity. I found the Asscher pattern, which has a pretty cool eyelet pattern on the back and started incorporating those instructions in between the spokes. I deviated at some point and made an extra triangle. I also needed to keep in mind that the i-cord binding still needed to happen, so I kept weighing the yarn to make sure I had enough. Once I reached the end, I followed the bind off instructions and wet blocked it.

Since I wanted the lace design to stand out a little more, I blocked it with straight edges instead of the spiderweb intention from the original pattern. This was probably not the best idea because what I liked most about the Aranea pattern was the spiderweb effect. However, I’m definitely not making this by hand ever again. I had to force myself to finish it. It has turned out a pretty decent size and it’s definitely wearable. I now also know how that gradation effect in yarn will play out when knitting. I have learnt (again) that endless stockinette is not my forte and will try to keep this in mind with future projects.

Fall Shawl

Making a Pirate Scarf for a Kayaking Friend

Last year, when Karen and I dyed different kinds of yarn, one of them was colour-mix that has sat in my stash since. I do find that yarn very interesting and I thought it would look good with browns, so when I had some red-brown yarn leftover from the Fringe! scarf, that set my brain in motion. I put them next to each other and I thought they looked good together. I wasn’t sure I would have enough for something wearable, so I dyed another skein some lighter brown (and later overdyed it with even more brown) and started planning.

I found the Pirate’s Cove for LK150 by Christine Welsh on Ravelry when looking for machine knit patterns. It also had a video tutorial attached with it, which was really nice. The main idea for the original Pirate’s Cove was to use a thicker yarn and increase one stitch every second row on one side to create an asymmetrical triangle scarf. Because I used thinner yarn and my bed wasn’t too wide, I opted to increase one stitch every four rows to create a longer triangle. Different stitch or colour patterns were suggested at intervals, but the knitter can make their own choices of course. I chose to do the first section in the red-browns, then some striped red-browns & colour-mix. Next came some thin red-brown, brown and colour-mix stripes with eyelets and without eyelets. Some flat brown after and then increasing width stripes of colour-mix and red-brown. In the last section of colour-mix, I knit some triangles with eyelets. The final section was some straight brown.

Since the straight edges started curling, I followed the directions for a decorative edge in the pattern. I chose to do the edge in the brown. I was very worried that I did not have enough yarn, but I tried to do one side in a different colour and it was awful. So I pulled it out and just .. kept my fingers crossed. I did lose yarn chicken by about 10-20 stitches on the bottom corner, so I used some leftover red-brown to finish those last few stitches. You’ll only notice if you know, so ssshhh. This shawl has now made its way to Karen, as it should suit her Fall colours.

Fringe!

Things I’ve learnt in this project: fringe knotting is not my thing.

According to Ravelry, I started this scarf on February 25 and finished blocking it on February 28. I may have been slightly neglecting writing about it for no good reason. This was a knitting machine project, hence the quick turnaround. I’d dyed two skeins of quarter round fingering weight yarn with browns, reds and oranges on February 9. Then followed the instructions in the Shawl for all reasons by Carole Thimidis pattern. I decided to do the fringe because I wanted to see how something like that would work.

Well, the knitting of this thing took a few hours. Unraveling and then knotting all the fringe took longer than actually knitting it. You basically knit three stitches, then skip a bunch of needles and then increase stitches to make a a quarter of the body of the scarf. Then those stitches are decreased again (while continuing with the fringe stitches). Half of the scarf is now done, so the stitches are increased again, which leaves little holes along the spine. Those stitches are decreased to finish the scarf. Wrapping my head around how this worked took longer than actually making the scarf. I’ve now figured out the logic but it took me so long. When the scarf is done, you start unraveling those fringe stitches row by row. Once you have one loop loose, you make a knot near the scarf body to prevent further raveling.

Once I had all the fringe knotted, the scarf was wetted and blocked to a nice right sided triangle. It came of the machine in a very different shape. It always amazes me how well blocking works, now that I’ve figured out that’s a thing. The most interesting thing about this scarf is that the colours look very different from different sides. You’ll see that in the blocking image too. While there is about 1.5 skein of yarn in there, and there are some minor colour differences between those yarns, it’s not like one is significantly lighter. It’s just the angle that changes the way it looks. Since it’s been finished, I have worn this thing a fair amount. It’s pretty big even if it’s not very warm but still cosy!

Tag: Shawl