Allow me introduce you to two sisters: Shoals & Shore. They’re crescent-shaped shawls worked from the bottom up; Shoals (as her name implies) is shallow, while Shore is deeper and rounder like a sandy beach. They both begin with a lace border, but Shoals‘ body is smooth stockinette, whereas Shore’s is an undulating garter stitch.

Shoals + Shore
PDF Patterns + Worksheet
£8.00

Shoals‘ lace looks like waves, and swaying seaweed, and seashells all at once. She’s a dainty little creature who will keep the sun off your shoulders while you relax on the beach with a book. Knit in a vibrant colour like turquoise, she’ll add a flourish to a plain outfit, especially useful if you’re travelling with a limited wardrobe. She could totally pull off white too, though.

Shore is sand lilies, mermaid’s purses, fishtails, and fins. Being a bit larger, she makes a good cover-up for the beach, tied nonchalantly around your hips or jauntily at your shoulder. She’ll also keep the chill off after your swim.

BONUS!

But I haven’t even told you the best part yet! The sisters bring with them a CRESCENT SHAWL SHAPING WORKSHEET which shows you the exact formula I used to design them in the first place. All you have to do is decide how rounded you want your shawl to be, fill in the blanks, and follow the pattern.

What does this mean to you?
1. It means that you can design your own crescent-shaped shawls using any stitch pattern you like for the border.
2. It means that you can modify patterns you already own to be shallower or deeper or A DIFFERENT SIZE!
3. It means that you can expand your knitting repertoire to include this intriguing knitting technique.

The worksheet elucidates the technique used in the beautiful Annis Shawl, designed by Susanna IC. I love this technique so much; it’s quite brilliant! If you haven’t tried it before, it works by decreasing at the end of each short row, so essentially the shawl is shaped in two ways. I think this worksheet will be of great value to you, because figuring out how these shawls work is by no means intuitive.

Don’t worry if you’re not good with maths, either. I’ve laid out the worksheet (which is 1 page, with an additional explanatory page) clearly and simply, so all you have to do is fill in the blanks, and perform some basic division. Perhaps you could use an abacus. :)

See? Life’s a breeze when you have the formula; now I have all this spare time to relax on the beach. :)

many moons

If you’re as fond of visual puns as I am, then you will appreciate how many themes are ripe for a crescent shawl…

How about…
a crescent-shaped shawl for a honeymoon, whether it’s your own, or a friend’s?
a Luna Lovegood shawl to celebrate the final Harry Potter film?
a “cheer up” shawl for a loved one who’s been mooning about?
a shawl inspired by the croissant, for elegant brunches at a café?

Details

Shoals & Shore each have 4 sizes, and both written & charted instructions.

Shoals
Circumference: 140 [168, 196, 252]cm / 55 [66, 77, 99]in
Width at widest point: 21 [23, 25, 29]cm / 8 [9, 10, 11.5]in
Yarn: Sport-weight cotton or cotton blend, approx. 200 [235, 260, 290]m / 220 [260, 285, 320]yds.
Needles: 5mm.
Gauge: 14sts / 22 rows over 10cm / 4in in stocking stitch.

Shore
Circumference: 140 [196, 252, 308]cm / 55 [77, 99, 121] in
Width at widest point: 28 [35, 42, 49]cm / 11 [14, 16.5, 19]in
Yarn: Sport-weight cotton or cotton blend, approx. 240 [310, 350, 370]m / 260 [340, 385, 405]yds.
Needles: 5mm.
Gauge: 14sts / 26 rows over 10cm / 4in in garter stitch.

The sisters are only available as a pair, as they complement each other so well. The best part is that if you don’t like my sizes you can use the worksheet to create your own, so altering any of the shawls to work with other yarn weights and gauges is easy. You can also effortlessly configure Shoals to be more curved, and Shore to be shallower. The possibilities are endless! One thing’s for sure, you’ll be blocking your own shawls in no time…

Have you read?

1. Mutant Shawls
2. Free Shawl Knitting Cheat Sheet
3. Weekending

As I continue to receive the sweetest “thank you” notes for the Shawl Shaping Cheat Sheet (which has now been downloaded over 3000 times), I’ve been considering easy ways to add borders to the shawls. Unless you want to push mindless knitting to the edge, that is… ;)

I tried my idea on this grey triangular shawl that’s been languishing for a while. All I did was work a stitch pattern which divided nicely into my stitch count (253). I stopped the regular shawl increases, so the border has straight sides, and a rounded tip (fig.1). Usually the 4 increases every 2 rows would be maintained into the border, so the shape of the shawl wouldn’t change (fig.2).

It’s difficult to predict how this method would look with different stitch patterns, but I really like the way it looks on this shawl. The tip definitely needs to be blocked to look good though, and I don’t know whether some of the larger shawl shapes would stretch the border out too much at the corners. What do you think? Do you like the effect?

If you’d like to try adding a border like this, the various shawl shapes will allow the following stitch pattern multiples:

TRIANGULAR: mult. of 4+1
SQUARE & CIRCULAR: mult. of 8+1
SEMI-CIRCULAR: mult. of 6+1
HEART-SHAPED: mult. of 6+3

Any variations on these are also good. For example, stitch patterns that are multiples of 2+1, 4+5, 8+1, 8+9, 12+1, 12+5, etc. will all work for the triangular shawl. Any stitch patterns worked over an odd number of sts will work for all the shawls, such as the lace stitch I used:

ROW 1: K1, *yo, k2tog, rep. from * to end.
ROW 2: Purl across.
ROW 3: *Ssk, yo, rep. from * to last st, k1.
ROW 4: Purl across.

An alternative would be to place stitch markers at the beginning and end of “blocks” of pattern repeats, to keep them separate from the shawl increases. Each time a pattern repeat was completed, if there were enough stitches for another repeat, the stitch markers would be moved along. In fact, if I wrote up a “cheat” like this, it could be used to fill in any shawl shape with a stitch pattern. Of course, there would be zig-zags of white space around the stitch pattern, but that isn’t unusual, though I do find the square border above rather more pleasing.

Please let me know what you think, shawl knitters!

P.S. This is my 7th shawl this year, so I’m sort-of on target for 11 shawls in 2011! :)

Have you read?

1. Free Shawl Knitting Cheat Sheet
2. Beeton Counterpane Shawl
3. Mutant Shawls

Since I demonstrated my purling technique in Love Your Purls, I’ve had loads of knitters contact me to let me know how much it’s helped them get faster at purling, and actually stop hating the process!

I’ve also had a few people asking me to demonstrate how I would work a knit stitch in this way. It certainly wouldn’t make sense to change techniques between knitting and purling, so I shot this video a while back, to show you how I knit and purl. You might be able to tell I’m working the Parasol Shawlette, which will be released oh-so-soon.

Knitters who purchase the Parasol Stole before the release, will get a free copy of the Shawlette pattern. Otherwise, it will be priced as a separate pattern, although I may offer a discounted “bundle” for the Stole & Shawlette together. So if you’re interested in knitting either, it’s best to buy now! :)

Have you read?

1. Love Your Purls

Have you read?

1. Working a Faster Ribbing?

You will need:

• yarn
• a piece of card
• a crochet hook

How Long?
The length of your fringe will really depend on what looks good to you, so I recommend you make a few “tassels”, attach them to your project, and step back to see if you think it looks the right length. Remember that the frequency of tassels will change the overall effect as well. Then cut your card to the right size, making sure you have an even width across (or some of your strands will end up shorter). Remember that if it’s a thick piece of card, this will add to the length of your strands when you wrap the yarn around it.

How Much Yarn?
Fringes take a LOT of yarn. It’s very difficult to estimate, but you could measure each of your strands, multiply it by the number of strands, then figure out how many “tassels” you have for every 10cm/4in of your edging and thereby figure out how many tassels you need in total and how many metres/yards of yarn that’s going to require. If you’re following a pattern, you might even be able to “guesstimate” how much extra yarn you need to purchase in advance in this way.

Instructions

1. Place your yarn against the card, lining the end of the strand up with the bottom of the card.

2. Wrap the yarn around as many times as the number of strands you want. You can see that for this shawl I used 6 strands in every bundle.

3. Get your scissors and snip through the bottom of the strands, then snip the end of the yarn at the same length.

4. Keeping the strands all together, get a crochet hook, insert it through the edge of the piece where you want to attach the fringe, and pull all the strands through. To get the neat side of the fringe on the right side of your work, you need to insert your hook from the back.

5. Pull the ends through the loop, making sure to keep them at an even length.

6. Tighten the tassel. This is called a “lark’s head knot”, in case you want to look it up. Now repeat the process for however many more tassels you need.

Tips

• For thicker yarns one strand may be enough for a fringe, but for thinner yarns like the one I’m working with, I recommend you bundle up several strands together or you may find that your fringe looks rather thin and scraggly. A card helps even when you’re working with a single strand, though.
• Remember to always pull through the same side. Examine the back and front of your fringe and you’ll see what I mean.
• For a triangular shawl, it might help to attach the fringe to the point to begin with, to see how far down it will extend (you don’t want to be treading on it all the time).

By the way, in case you’re wondering, this is a KniTwit Shawl that I knit the summer before last in a lovely soft mohair blend. The “pattern” is less than 147 characters long, so I think it’s fair to say it’s one of the easiest shawls you can make. Add a fringe like this & it’s also very stylish. If you knit it in a thicker yarn (DK or maybe even worsted), I bet you could have it done in a weekend!

Have you read?

1. Free Pattern: Fringe Arm Warmers
2. Beeton Counterpane Shawl
3. Knit Abacus Pouch / Pencil Case