Posted on January 2, 2024

One of the knitting projects I’m working on is a big bottom-up triangular shawl in less-than-fingering weight yarn (NM 1/15): it feels like a cloud should by all rights feel, and I have good expectations out of it, but it’s taking forever and a day.

And then one day last spring I started thinking in the general direction of top-down shawls, and decided I couldn’t wait until I had finished the first one to see if I could design one.

For my first attempt I used an odd ball of 50% wool 50% plastic I had in my stash and worked it on 12 mm tree trunks, and I quickly made something between a scarf and a shawl that got some use during the summer thunderstorms when temperatures got a bit lower, but not really cold. I was happy with the shape, not with the exact position of the increases, but I had ideas for improvements, so I just had to try another time.

Digging through the stash I found four balls of Drops Alpaca in two shades of grey: I had bought it with the intent to test its durability in somewhat more demanding situations (such as gloves or even socks), but then the LYS1 no longer carries it, so I might as well use it for something a bit more one-off (and when I received the yarn it felt so soft that doing something for the upper body looked like a better idea anyway).

I decided to start working in garter stitch with the darker colour, then some garter stitch in the lighter shade and to finish with yo / k2t lace, to make the shawl sort of fade out.

The first half was worked relatively slowly through the summer, and then when I reached the colour change I suddenly picked up working on it and it was finished in a couple of weeks.

looks denser in a nice way, but the the lace border is scrunched up.

Then I had doubts on whether I wanted to block it, since I liked the soft feel, but I decided to try it anyway: it didn’t lose the feel, and the look is definitely better, even if it was my first attempt at blocking a shawl and I wasn’t that good at it.

I’m glad that I did it, however, as it’s still soft and warm, but now also looks nicer.

The pattern is of course online as #FreeSoftWear on my fiber craft patterns website.

1. at least local to somebody: I can’t get to a proper yarn shop by foot, so I’ve bought this yarn online from one that I could in theory reach on a day trip, but it has not happened yet.↩︎

https://blog.trueelena.org/blog/2024/01/02-crescent_shawl/index.html