from folk shawls by cheryl oberle
size 8 needles
ingredients:
recycled sweater wool – the sweater was thrifted by my friend sarah in new york, mailed to me in vancouver
cascade lana d’oro 50% alpaca/50% wool
frog tree merino (inherited from sue)
edging – sweatpants grey cascade 220, overdyed by me
the only thing i altered in this pattern was to stop doing the feather and fan sequence 6 repeats early. even with stopping early, my grandmother is a lot smaller than me, so it will probably be a bit big for her. i like the way it looks and would consider doing this modification again.
as you may know from previous posts, i was planning to keep this shawl one solid color. when i ran out of wool, i had to spit spliced all of my remaining balls of the pink into one ball to use for the lace section. i decided later that it needed a bit more lace than the pink had to offer, so i started piling wool around the edging in different combinations. my grandmother is not particularily fond of wool, so i not only needed good colors for the edging, but also soft wools. i was also careful to not make it look to scrappy and like i ran out of yarn. i’m pleased and think the edging actually looks quite nice. hope she likes it!
overall a thoroughly enjoyable knit. the yarn had a lovely feel and i do like garter stitch. i might be a substantial shawl girl… which i guess makes sense since i already love lace done in larger yarns. plus i’m cold all the time and i can’t imagine a lace weight shawl being all that warm.
my favorite part (besides the whole knitting something for a loved one…) was learning a few new things about shawl shaping. i made ‘tails’ for the first time (seen above) and doing that step also made the top of the shawl curve a bit so that it stays on better over the shoulders. i’ve also never completed a shawl that started at the back of the neck. i love how the final rows (although very long) make the outside edge of the shawl, opening up many doors for contrasting edgings. much less awkward if you run out of yarn like i happened to do on this one.
now to put it in the mail!
