Birthday Shawl

Progress

progress 100%

This project was started with the sole intention of giving to my mother for her birthday. Unfortunately for her, I feel in love with it once I completed it. I found a simple pattern for a shawl online, and basically needed an excuse to buy the yarn and materials to begin the project. I figured that since this would be for a birthday present, something I would spend money on later, I might as well spend the money now to start a new project. This was the perfect project to sit and knit without thinking because most of it was garter stitch. I could just take it with me and lose myself in the stitches.

Now that the shawl itself was done and already taken off the needles, when I realized that I want to add some detail. It was a bit shorter than I wanted, because I thought it was done quite a few rows before it really was. I managed to get it back onto the needles by knitting the edge back on, and I knit a border in purl and knit stitches which make up almost a check pattern along the bottom edge.

The edging is a simple knit-purl pattern that can be seen in this image. The white squares are K on right side rows, and P on wrong side rows. The green squares are just the reverse.

This pattern really helped me get a better understanding of how increases can change the shape of a knitted garment. I have ideas to use this triangular shape for ponchos, other shawls, and this was the base for my idea with the chevron scarf.

What have I learned?

I need to be patient, and be absolutely SURE that I want to bind off something that doesn’t have a set ending point. Also, it’s really hard to measure if a shawl is complete when it’s on circular needles all bunched up.
I can use this pattern in many variations for the future, including the Chevron Scarf