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March Madness Challenge:The Saturday Shawl
Around 9pm last night, I cast off what I’m calling “The Saturday Shawl”. The actual knitting took about 7 hours, including 2 complete frogs while trying to determine the right size. While Sandra worked on actual work, I knit as fast as I could, blazing through about 300 yards of Koigu PPM and fifty or so beads.
Because the yarn I picked was kind of crazy and loud, I wanted something simple and straightforward that would show off the colors more than a specific stitch pattern, especially since I was playing with a new-to-me construction for a shawl. The bulk of the shawl is knit in garter stitch, with beads placed every 6 rows to highlight the directional lines of the pattern.
I was lucky with the beads. With the December Year of Lace pattern, lovingly designed by Sivia Harding, I had placed a rather large bead order with Fire Mountain Gems and decided to throw in some neutral seed beads to keep on hand for my own designs. This was my first time using beads, and the larger silver-lined triangle beads worked well with the yarn and the drape of the fabric.
Rather than string them on the yarn ahead of time, I used the crochet placement technique, placing the bead over a teeny tiny crochet hook and using the hook to pull the stitch through the bead. It’s very cool and very fun, even though it interrupts the pace of the knitting more than sliding a bead up into place.
While knitting, I thought of this project as an experiment of sorts. I wanted to build a triangle shawl out of two mitered triangles, knit towards the center. Like so:
By provisionally casting on along the traditional ‘center rib’ of the shawl and casting on for half the top edge, the knitter works inward, decreasing four stitches every RS row. The first triangle, labeled “1″ in the illustration, is completed by casting off 4 stitches represented by the pink triangle. The second triangle is worked in a similar way, unzipping the provisionally cast on stitches and casting on the remaining top edge.
I’m sure it’s been done before, but it’s not something I’ve personally knit or designed.
This kind of construction opens up all kinds of design opportunities, but challenges as well. Because each half of the shawl is essentially completed at the center of the long edge, a border worked simultaneously with the body of the shawl would require grafting to join at that pink triangle. I discovered this when working a small sample with an edging pattern I loved. It can be done by carefully accounting for the number of rows so that each end of the border met in the middle in a pleasing manner, but it was too challenging for a Saturday afternoon design project.
The opportunities, though, are so intriguing to me. On triangle 2 in the diagram above, and in the photo below, I show the directional lines created by the garter stitch.
We’re plenty familiar with those in the sense of your more typical triangle shawl design. By putting two triangles together, those lines shift into a different direction; horizontal across the back of the shoulders when worn as a shawl. But, I’m excited to apply a botanical lace motif to this construction, and knit raised designs that meet at those two points on the sides of the shawl.
It’s a simple concept, and I’m not 100% sure why I’m so enchanted with it. Maybe it’s the idea that taking a familiar construction and tweaking it just a little results in a completely different effect than any other way of knitting a triangle.
Maybe it’s also that working in two halves keeps the knitting fun and always changing. Those long rows at the beginning feel very long, but quickly morph into speedy sections as the stitch count continually decreases.
In any case, that idea I had on Friday morning turned into something I’ll be able to wear to work on Monday. I’m particularly enamored with these small shawls. They’re perfect to just sling around your neck, and the triangle shape, when worn with the point at the front, stays nicely in place all day.
In summary:
- Hand-painted sock yarn
- Provisional cast on
- Placing beads with a teeny tiny crochet hook
- Knitting a shawl in less than a day
- Getting my math geek on while blogging
As promised, I’ll be writing the pattern up this evening. March Madness Challenge? Nearly complete!
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March 21st, 2010 at 2:11 pm
Hi there,
Thanks for sharing this – I totally understand when an idea grabs holds and you can’t put it down until it is completely (obsessively) explored!
A question – can’t you knit the shawl starting at the pink triangle in section 1, cast off the “top” edge of that half of the shawl, cast-on the “top” edge of section 2 and continue on decreasing down to the centre cast-off of section 2? This would eliminate the need for a provisional cast-on and ensure an uninterrupted (but uni-directional) flow of motifs across the back. I’m sure you thought through this during your “shawl madness” so I’d love some feedback.
Thanks again for sharing.
March 21st, 2010 at 4:08 pm
V6Aknits – You could, except the direction would be all wrong. Triangle 1 would start from the edge up and triangle 2 would start from the top center down. It would even make a difference with a simple pattern like the one I picked. That said, if one wanted to play with non-directional patterning, it could be interesting!
March 21st, 2010 at 4:10 pm
Also, one other point about that. On the first half of the shawl, you’d be increasing to get it to the right size. On the second half, you’d be decreasing. That’s going to make each half look different as well, and would make the yarnover pattern here impossible to get identical on both halves.