Earlier Knitted Shawls
I moved all my knitted shawls with comments from my old site to this one so that it would be easier to get to them.
Lion Brand Homespun Shawls and Stoles
A group of friends and I recently made a prayer shawl for our dear friend, Billie Finney. (Her photo is included in the picture to the left.) Although we are strung out across the country, the shawl was in everyone’s home by the time it was finished. Some of us knitted on it, and some of us just tied knots in the fringe for it. Everyone had a part in the shawl making, though. The pattern is the Prayer Shawl on the Lion Brand Yarns site. This is the Windsor color, and it’s made of their Homespun yarn on size 10.5 needles. The pattern is a variation of the garter stitch. Nan Berg, Bev Robinson, Marge and Larrie Moses, Sharon Boggs, Marcia Spencer, and I all worked on this shawl. The cute little cat pin was hand made by Bev for Billie. Nan Berg took the photos and kindly gave me permission to post them here.
I enjoyed working on Billie’s shawl so much, I decided to make another one. So this time I chose the Delft color–still blue, but lighter. As you can see, all of this yarn has an intriguing stripe to it. The blues in this shawl were lighter, and they remind me of all the blues in the sky. One of the strands of the darker blue in it is so pure, so clean, it almost makes my teeth hurt to look at it. I enjoyed making this one very much, as it was a gift for a friend–just because.
This is a closeup of the shawl fringe. This yarn unravels like crazy, so in making these two shawls, we tied knots at the end of all the fringe. That allows the ends to frizz a bit and yet stay in control too.
I made this shawl for another friend out of the Caribbean colored Homespun by Lion Brand. I had to take a break from blue! The color is actually red and white, but it looks rosy in most light. This pattern is very simple and goes very fast. I found that size 13 straight needles make the work too heavy for my hands. I finally located some circular needles in that size, and that was much better. If I were making this again, I’d make it larger. This makes a small shawl. The edging is crocheted, and in order to make it open up I had to steam it. The pattern is on the Lion Brand site listed as the Gray Triangular Shawl. Above are some closeups of the shawl.
Pacific Northwest Shawl
This is my Pacific Northwest shawl designed by Evelyn Clark from Fiber Trends. The color isn’t quite right here. It’s actually a soft blue, somewhat like blue denim. I made this some months ago, but I just got around to dressing it and getting some photos of it. I dressed mine to 72″X41.5″, across the top and down the back.
This is another view of the shawl. It took less than 4 oz. of yarn. I used Jaggerspun Zephyr, a wool and silk yarn, and a US size 6 circular needle to make it. My husband couldn’t believe how light it was when he picked it up. It really is just a whisper in your hands, but it feels wonderful and cozy on.
Here you can see the detail of the patterns a little better. At the top are the seagulls, then under that are the evergreen trees, sand dollars, water, and fish; along the edge, the scallops are the shells. I eventually sent this shawl to my mother.
Forest Path Stole
June, 2003–This is a work in progress, the Forest Path stole, an entrelac pattern, designed by Faina Letoutchaia in Interweave Knits magazine. This is not dressed, and it looks rather puffy here, but it will flatten out to lace once it’s finished and dressed. I’m using Jaggerspun Zephyr again, just another color. I will have enough yarn left from this pound cone for another shawl. A lot of people have asked about the color of this yarn. This color is as close to the original as I could get on my monitor; however, it shows a bit bluer than the actual yarn. The label inside the cone calls this “Teal,” but it is a light teal, very soft and lovely.
I don’t know whether you can tell much about the stole here. The stole uses moss stitch for the border and edge triangles, and then the entrelac is made of rows of three patterns: fern, birch leaves, and lily-of-the-valley. I’m on tier 10 on it now, so that means I’m a bit less than half of the way through with the entrelac. Then I have the top triangles and all the border to finish. One thing I like about this stole is that with entrelac, you never have long rows to do. Twenty stitches or so to a row in the block, and you’re through and ready for the return trip. I used a 24″ circular #3 needle for the short borders only. All the rest of the time I used two double pointed needles.
September, 2003–The stole is finished at long last. I’m never one to have very elegant surroundings when I’m dressing my knitwork, and this is an example. Mismatched towels, notwithstanding, this is the stole on the floor with nylon cording to pull it into shape around the edge and pinned down. When it was finished, the stole was so puffy it looked way too short and too narrow. (You can see how puffy it was in the photos above.) I was unsure that mine would really dress out flat. When I dressed it, though, it magically became a pleasing 86″X32″. It’s hard to believe this is the same project, isn’t it?
Here you can see the three pattern blocks contained in the Forest Path Stole. On the left, top to bottom, is a row of birch leaves; then comes the fern blocks and, after that, the lily-of-the-valley. The little blooms of the lily-of-the-valley are known as nupps. I did mine a bit different from the pattern. I did two yarn overs before and after each bloom instead of just one, and on the next row, I dropped the extra yarn overs and then knitted all the stitches together for each nupp. This gave me consistently sized nupps without struggling to leave them loose enough to insert the needle on the next row. I found it much easier to knit that way.
This is the stole finished at last. The side borders were attached in a sliding loop technique which I found easy to do, though slow. Rather than knitting the long border edge and the stole edge together as one, you draw up a long loop with the working yarn through the stole edge and use it to knit the border out and back. Then you draw up a new loop for the next two rows of border. It’s a fun technique. I started it May 25, and I finished it Sept. 4. I am not a fast knitter, and I didn’t knit on it every day. However, I got into a rhythm while knitting it, and I found that changing from block to block kept the project interesting to me. I learned a lot doing this pattern, and I enjoyed every minute of it.
Peacock Feathers Shawl
This is my Peacock Feathers shawl. This is a design by Fiddlesticks Knitting. I made it out of Jaggerspun Zephyr, a wool and silk laceweight yarn. It measures 100″ across the top edge and 48″ down the back, a little larger than I expected, but it was so easy, I guess I relaxed some while I knitted it. I got four ounces of yarn, and I have a lot of it left over. The color is a peacock color, and I found the color really bled when I washed it. However, I detect no change in the color of the shawl, really.
Above are two more shots of the shawl. There are *lots* of feathers in this design. I thought I was never going to get past the small feathers at the center back of the shawl. They do make a nice lacy, light shawl, though, when it’s done. The shot below is of the center back tip. This shawl took me five weeks to knit.
Creatures of the Reef Shawl
This shawl is in progress. It’s the Creatures of the Reef shawl by Fiddlesticks Knitting. I’m using exactly the same yarn here that I did for the Forest Path stole, Jaggerspun Zephyr. I’ve become a real fan of that yarn. It’s light and quite soft. I bought a cone of this color, and I’m still whittling away at it. This is an easy pattern, and it seems to go faster and faster as you start the shawl at the bottom and decrease as you go up. Naturally, this is still not dressed, so it’s not at its prettiest. This shawl is garter stitched, so it looks really small here.
Around the bottom edge of the shawl are lovely little seashells. This makes a pretty scalloped edge on it. These are easy enough, but there comes a point where all the fullness of the seashells is decreased out. You knit 13 together to do that. Once you get past that row, the rest of it is easy–or at least, it has been so far.
Immediately above the seashells, there’s a row of bubbles. Now, Dorothy doesn’t tell you to put a lot of markers in that row, but I found that I needed them to facilitate the counting of the stitches. So when I did the second chart of bubbles, I put markers in about every 20 or so stitches, and I found it was much easier to keep track of what I was doing. Between the two rows of bubbles, there is a section of adorable little crabs and seahorses. I hope you can see something of them here. They will be clearer once the shawl is dressed. In these photos I’ve gotten up to the starfish chart. I’ve done about half of that chart. This is an easy shawl to do, and I think I’ll enjoy having it.
At last I have my Creatures of the Reef dressed so that I can show what I did. This shows the edge of the shawl, the crabs, seahorses, and the pretty shell edging on it. It’s quite different from undressed shawl on the previous page, isn’t it? It is a lot of trouble to pin out the shell edging all around the shawl, but I thought it was well worth the effort.
This shows the starfish and two fish rows that are in the shawl. Between them are rows of bubbles.
This is the whole shawl, or what I can show you of it. I think this, at the moment, is my favorite shawl. At the very top of the shawl is the sea foam pattern. I think those little scallops around the edge of the shawl make it look so feminine.
Sheep Shawl
After I finished the Creatures of the Reef shawl, I decided I wanted to do the Sheep Shawl from Evelyn Clark through Fiber Trends. So I did it in apricot Zephyr. This photo doesn’t show the real color of the shawl. However, you can see the sun’s rays at the top of the photo, then the orchard, the houses, and the sunflowers.
Here’s the whole shawl, and the color is better here. I think you can see the remainder of the shawl in this photo. Below the houses and sunflowers, you can see grass, sheep, more grass, and the pointy edging. This was a simple shawl to make.
Wool Peddler’s Shawl
This is the Wool Peddler’s Shawl from Folk Shawls by Cheryl Oberle. It’s made of Mountain Colors’ Wool Crepe in the Wild Iris colorway. I believe this color is no longer available. I saw the yarn at a local yarn store, and I fell in love with the colors, so I got it not knowing what I’d do with it. Because it’s a crepe yarn and thin, I thought I’d try making a shawl of it, and a lace one, no less. I know that handpainted yarns and crinkled yarns aren’t ideal for lace, but I felt like giving it a try. I did have a little pooling of the colors. The teal pool in the upper center of this photo is the worst I had. I decided to go with it. I used about 3/4 of the skein, knitting with a single strand. I think I have about 3 oz. of the wool left. I used size 7 knitting needles.
This is a closeup of the lace pattern. You can see how well the lace opened up after dressing. I made this shawl over a period of exactly 3 weeks while I was doing some cutwork and watching the Tour de France. So it was mindless pickup work to keep my hands busy. When I got to the end of the shawl, I decided that it was going to be too small. This yarn is very springy right out of the hank, and even though it’s all wool and should work fine, I had my doubts. So I added another repeat of the lace pattern, and at the bottom rather than just casting off, I did a narrow idiot cording. Turns out, it dressed out fine, and while it’s not the largest shawl I’ve made, it’s quite satisfactory, and I love the feel of this yarn. It’s wonderful to the hand.
Seascape Shawl
This is my Seascape Shawl. It’s a Fiber Trends pattern by Evelyn Clark. This is made of violet Jaggerspun Zephyr–a yarn my daughter gave me for Christmas one year. I made this last year, but I just hadn’t had an opportunity to dress it. The color seems especially difficult for me to photograph correctly. I believe this picture is the closest to the true color, though. My shawl measured 72″ across the top and 37″ down the center. I could have dressed this shawl wider, though. This is the first semi-circular shawl I’ve made, and I think it worked out perfectly. It’s made up of many designs, but the one you can see best in this shot is the feather and fan pattern along the bottom. That isn’t one of my favorite design patterns to knit as it gets a little monotonous to me, but I do love the way it looks when it’s finished. It looked so much like the waves in the sea, I was glad that Evelyn had put it in this shawl. If the bottom of the fan is dressed by pinning each loop at the bottom, it’s especially pretty, I think.
This is a closeup of the feather and fan design with the starfish right above it. The feather and fan edging for this shawl makes it almost appear to be ruffled.
Here is a closer look at the shells on this shawl; at the top of the picture are the cone shells followed by a row of sand dollars. Under that are two rows of sea scallops and a row of the starfish. I thought the starfish worked out especially well. I enjoyed knitting this shawl very much, and I recommend it to any of you who are looking for a rewarding shawl to make.
From here on, please see the Gallery of Shawls to see works posted in 2005.