Tag Archives: shawl

life on sundays (on saturday)

1 Reply

My Life on Sundays is done.

Life on Sundays (Finished!)

I will admit that in the last stretch of knitting – the part where each row is upwards of 350 stitches – even I, die-hard garter stitch aficionado, was getting a bit disheartened and starting to crack jokes about Eternal Garter Stitch. Because the yellow garter stitch border is knit last, progress felt like it was going slower as I went, and it was definitely an exercise in discipline to knit until I was nearly out of yarn rather than bind off early.

Still, now that I have it off the needles and all washed, I have to say: this is a really nice shawl.

Life on Sundays (Finished!)

It does not hurt that the yarn C picked out is gorgeous – it’s madelinetosh pashmina, which is a heavy-ish fingering weight merino/silk/cashmere blend. It drapes like nothing else, and the combination of garter stitch and cashmere make it intensely squishy and cuddly.

It’s also enormous – these photos are after blocking, and the shawl edges easily hang over the edges of my dining table.

Life on Sundays (Finished!)

I’m giving this away to C, who asked me to make this shawl in the first place. There is a little part of me that wishes I could keep it – we’re still having a lot of awful, rainy, grey ick weather, even though it’s the middle of April, and this is exactly the right kind of scarf for it. But if I miss it that much, I can always make myself another one to keep.

I might give myself a bit of a break, though, before I launch right into another one. That was a fair bit of garter stitch.

Life on Sundays (Finished!)

so i’ve got a question: do you want to have a slumber party in my basement?

2 Replies

I’ve had a pretty calm first week at school, so the knitting has been going pretty quickly. I managed to turn my skein of pretty, pretty Mini Maiden (50/50 wool/silk! omg!) from this:

minimaiden01

Into this.

shawl02

And in a little less than a week. The pattern I’m using is the Shetland Triangle Shawl () which, according to Ravelry, everyone and their dog has already knit. On the one hand, this makes me feel very unspecial and boring, but on the other it lets me exploit the power of Ravelry to my advantage, which is awesome.

For instance: the pattern calls for ten repeats of the main lace motif, and then to begin the edging. But other people have already used this pattern with this yarn, and discovered that if you want to use up the entire skein, you can get away with twelve repeats. I realize this is not new news to anybody, but the fact that a website exists where I can figure this out is still, like, the coolest thing ever.

Does anyone know if there’s some sort of Ravelry for sewing? I fear I’ve been spoiled.

Song of the Entry: Ke$ha – Your Love Is My Drug (Listen)

fo: daybreak shawl

1 Reply

daybreakfold

This shawl, like a lot of things I’ve knit this year, has been an instructive exercise in the power of blocking. You may recall how scrunched and curled this looked when it came off the needles? I blocked it, and now it looks like this.

daybreakwide

Pattern: a very truncated version of Daybreak, which was super fun to knit – the stripes and slipped stitches are just enough to keep the stockinette interesting, and the extra increases make this a perfect shawl to wear as a scarf, with the way it curves.
Yarn: Koigu KPPPM, 2 skeins – one in grey, one in turquoise.
Needles: I used my 4mm Addi Lace circular, because I didn’t own the size called for in the pattern. It was close enough.

I modified the pattern a bit, mostly to allow for the fact that I really didn’t want to buy extra skeins of yarn, even though the yardage that I had was much less than what was called for to knit the smallest size. I worked fewer stripe repeats (nine stripes of each) and striped the garter rows at the end. I ended up having a bit of the turquoise left over, but I used up the charcoal almost entirely, and I’m a big fan of the way the finished product turned out. The other change I made was to switch the M1R and M1Ls at the very end of each row with yarnovers, to make sure that the edge was nice and stretchy.

daybreaktip

Because I worked the whole thing on a slightly larger needle and blocked it pretty fiercely, the finished shawl actually a perfect size – just big enough to wear as a scarf, over a t-shirt with jeans, and just in time. Fall is actually starting to settle in (finally), and I can’t wait to wear everything I’ve knit this summer with my new fall wardrobe.