Don't you just love jumping into a new project?
It's even more exciting when it's a mystery. You don't yet know what fun adventure is ahead of you!
We're starting small with clue 1 of the Grianchloch shawl, with just a few stitches. I opted to start with the Twisted German Cast-On (also known as the Old Norwegian Cast-On) as it gives a nice, attractive but stretchy edge. If you have knit a shawl before, then you know that lots of stretch is what it's all about!
Shawl Shape
This shawl is worked on the bias. This means that you have increases on one end and decreases on the other end of rows. For the shawl to grow in size, you will need more increases than decreases.
Typically, this shawl style tends to be long and skinny as you will be working a lot of rows while it increases slowly. I've tweaked this basic shape in the design just a little to allow for a little more width.
This is done by using short rows.
The short rows are worked on the end that has the increases. This means that in the short row 'section' there are only increases and no decreases. This allows the shawl to grow a little wider than would normally happen with the biased shape.
Short Row Tip!
I've used German Short Rows in this shawl as it's the neatest way of working short rows in garter stitch. These will look the same on both the right and wrong side of the work, which is ideal for a shawl!
Modification Tips for the Grianchloch Shawl.
Colour Changes
I'm never fond of changing yarns and joining in new yarn on shawls. So I will usually do my best to minimise the number of times I have to join in yarn.
When designing this shawl, I change my colour for the short row sections on the wrong side. This means that the main colour only has to travel a couple of rows up (as there are no short rows on that end) which will allow you to avoid breaking the yarn.
However, my colours do not have a big variation.
This means that the colour difference is very subtle on the right side. This will be more dramatic if you have a big difference in colour. I like how this works, but if you don't, you can work your colour change on a right side row and adjust the short rows by a row to compensate.
Yarn Variations
The main yarn used in this shawl is a fingering weight yarn with a contrasting lace weight yarn. My lace weight was a brushed mohair blend, which is very forgiving of knitting loosely as the mohair 'fills in the gaps'.
The stitches in the lace weight are going to be much more open than the fingering weight yarn.
This will help to create two different textures for each section. Aggressive blocking will help to even out any uneven stitches you may have from knitting the contrast yarn loosely.
In my sample, I used 2 skeins of Cabrito, which have 25g in each. However, the way the shawl is written, if you have a single 50g skein of contrast colour, you can work that for all contrast yarn sections. This should work well in the pattern, especially if it has some colour variations.
Shawl Width
If you want to make the shawl wider, you can work more short row sections, or perhaps make the short row sections that are there wider.
If you do this, however, you will need more than a single skein of the main colour. The shawl, as written, uses that yarn almost completely. There is a little extra of the contrast yarn to play with.
Wishing you all the best for clue 1 of the KAL.
Don't forget to drop into Knithub to join the chat!
And if you'd like to join us for the 2024 Mystery Knit-along, just click here.
