Step up your small shawl game!

Inspired by a beloved childhood film, this shawl is the perfect companion, both for knitting and wearing. A complex leaf lace motif at the hem gives way to a simple, delicate top border and soothing garter stitch, while an unusual edging-first construction provides entertainment even for more advanced knitters. The laceweight yarn and small needles give the fabric a fantastic squishy feel, great for draping over short sleeved shirts on breezy late summer evenings, but also wonderful for scrunching around your neck as the chill of fall and winter moves in.

Shaping in the lower body of the shawl rounds out the bottom edge, and creates a wedge that might just become the keyhole to your very own secret garden.

7 page PDF, with both charted and written instructions as well as a small tutorial for the sideways cast-on technique used in pattern.

Pattern is available in the shop and on Ravelry.

A few days before we went on vacation, I tweeted something to the effect of being quite tired of the shawlette trend. Don’t get me wrong, I love a lace shawl, and some of the smaller ones are absolutely stunning. But the market has been flooded with boring, formulaic pieces—cast on with a garter tab, increase at the edges and down a center spine, work the body in garter or stockinette, add on a lace pattern at the edge, call it a day.

And, to be honest, maybe even more than being tired of the trend, I was tired of feeling left out of it. I have no interest in either designing or knitting these types of shawls, which left me rather lost in all sorts of discussions over pattern, yarn choice, KALs, and all sorts of other things. So, rather than pout about it, I took it upon myself as a challenge to design a shawlette with some of these features, while putting an interesting twist on it.

I bought some yarn on our trip,

And did some swatching in the car from some stitch pattern notes hastily thrown together before we left.

And I liked what I was getting, but still couldn’t quite get a grasp on how to construct the shawl itself, even after hours of thought.

Then, one night while fighting with the terrible internet connection in our hotel room, I stumbled upon Lee Meredith’s rather fantastic tutorial on sideways edge cast-ons, and it made me think about my knitting in an entirely different light. Or should I say, an entirely different direction. There are certainly shawls out there that are worked from the bottom hem up, either starting with the point and increasing ever outward, or are simply a reverse of the above (tiresome!) construction. But I was envisioning something a little stranger. So I knit a very long piece of edging,

and then I started in on the body, turning the straight strip of lace into a curved hem. (Every once in a while I would have to lay it out and arrange it the way it would end up when I was finished just to convince myself I wasn’t crazy.)

Fortunately my fears were unfounded, because after a few days it started to look like a real shawl.

And last night I hit the home stretch—it is such a gratifying feeling, let me tell you, after working some very long rows at the beginning of the body, to finally get to the neck, where each row is like, three stitches long. (Not really, but you know what I mean!)

After a wash and block, it’s exactly what I wanted; fits the trend without being trendy, basic enough to wear but interesting enough to hold my interest while I knit it. (Plus, it’s teal. In my attempt to get away from green I seem to have transferred my affections to this color instead. Oops?)

Pattern: My own, available shortly
Yarn: Mountain Colors Winter Lace, colorway Harmony Lake, less than half a skein
Needles: US4/3.5mm Knitpicks Options
Notes: Scroll up!
On Ravelry here.

I don’t know what’s gotten into me. After a few days of total knitting burnout, all of a sudden I am all sweaters all the time. I cranked out a quick test knit for (surprise!) Laura.

This is pre-blocking—after a wash the shoulders no longer stick up like that! I’m going to find a cute dress so I can do a for real photoshoot for it, because it is super adorable.

Then I worked up the courage to rip out a significant portion of the Kata pullover. Emphasis on ‘significant’—

all the way back to the waist shaping! Honestly, there was a lot more wrong with it than just the shoulders, and now that I’ve gained some distance (and with it, perspective), I’m actually re-thinking the whole shape of the garment. In the end this may turn into a sleeveless blouse just to get it off the needles and out of my hair.

And then, last night at knit night, after spending a day or so trying to convince myself to work on some other WIPS (yeah right), I gave in and started work on a sleeve for a new sweater.

Which turned out to be just the thing, because I’ve already finished the first and started on the second. This sweater was actually originally intended to be the companion piece to Kata, but since that may no longer actually be a sweater, I’ll probably just separate the two and try to give this one its own, distinct feel. And hopefully it’ll work up faster too!