This is the third in a series of six shawls featuring Done Roving Yarn. This is the wonderful Panda Light, a merino, bamboo rayon blend with fantastic drape and gorgeous sheen. It comes in an array of spectacular handpainted colors and is a true joy to work with.

As with any handpainted yarns, there is no dye lot so an exact color match of more than one skein is sometimes hard to achieve. This uniqueness is one of the properties that makes handpainted yarn so appealing but also sometimes hard to work with in larger quantities. We all know of the fiddly ways used sometimes to hide the slight variation in color intensity. I decided with project instead of hiding that variation I would embrace it as part of the overall design.

The main stitch used throughout this shawl is a variation of a stitch from knitting on the edge by Nicky Epstein called the Hindu Pillar stitch. I wanted the stitch, meant to be worked in a straight column, to curve around the edge of the shawl. I found that by moving it one stitch to the right each time and inserting garter stitch spaces between the pillars I was able to achieve the look of the Pillar stitch with the curve I wanted.

This modified crescent is worked from side to side. The first skein is used to grow the shawl. When it is time to switch to the second skein, the design undergoes a change as well. Short row shaping is used to create the curve of the crescent while removing the garter stitches between the pillar stitches. The decreasing side of the crescent is created by discontinuing the beginning increasing stitches but continuing the curve along the outer edge created by a k2tog. There are only 5 stitches to bind off at the end.

Stitches used: k2tog, kfbf, k3tog, p3tog

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