5-20-2014 - from my old blog

The shawl was made from two skeins of madeleinetosh tosh merino light in “Thyme”. The mystery part was that I only had a vague idea of what it would be when I started knitting it. (It’s sort of like the joke about computer programmers: “You go find out what they want, and I’ll start coding.”)

I wanted it to be a half-circle with a garter stitch base, and something that would be totally reversible. I also wanted it to be bigger than the other half-circle shawls I’ve made. But other than that, I decided to just figure it out as I went along.

My original idea was to have some sort of pleated ruffle as the edging, but I knew that would take up about half the total amount of yarn. So when I used up the first skein, I put the shawl on waste yarn and gave it a wet block. I could see that it wasn’t going to end up as large as I wanted, so that idea was out.

I definitely didn’t want to do a sideways knitted-on border, because the second skein of yarn was darker and had more color variation, and I thought the color changes would be too distracting. This turned out to be a good choice, because there were some definite dark streaks in the second skein.

After contemplating options for a lace border that would be reversible, I decided to just make it easy on myself and do a garter-stitch-based feather-and-fan pattern. Not very exciting, but effective enough. I continued to knit the body until I had about 60 grams of the second skein left, and then started the lace.

I’m happy with the size – worn as a shawl, it covers my arms down to my elbows. But I can also wear it as a big scarf scrunched around my neck.

The madtosh yarn is soft and yummy. There might even be a few more evenings that are cool enough to wear it before the summer heat really hits.