Stash Busting a Shawl
Project Specs:
Yarn Used: Lion Brand Yarn Heartland in Great Smoky Mountain
4 skeins and some change, of 251 yds each
Size 8 knitting needles (5.0 mm)
Length at longest point: 105 inches
Width at widest point: 31.5 inches
Number of visible mistakes made that I was too lazy to frog: I think only one, so that's nice.
Major casualties: A little more than half of a fully made shawl, and my pride when I had to buy more yarn to finish a stash busting project... twice.
First event attended: Who even knows at this point?
I am a bit of an obsessive planner when it comes to most projects. I like to take my time and logic out timelines and methodology, shop around for all the materials necessary, thoroughly read any and all relevant research materials, and just, in general, have a good handle on what I'm doing before I start doing it.
I've been working on what I'm calling both Project: Don't Die in the Summer and Project Marion's Going to Pennsic 49 (when it eventually happens). It's a project to ensure I have a) a decent variety of garb pieces that I can layer together to balance out the fact that Virginia gets both brutally hot and brutally cold throughout the year and b) a sufficient set of garb and equipment to actually go to SCA camping events. When I started working on that major project, I only had one functioning smock and the black wool kirtle, which let's face it, isn't exactly sufficient for camping events, or anything with extreme temperatures. This project will involve making several dresses, smocks, accessories, etc. While this large undertaking was in planning stages, I decided to do some stash busting on my yarn stash, with some remnants of a project that did not go my way initially. It's also proven a great way to take a break from garb off and on.
It's been a while since I did a knitting project, largely because knitting isn't really period for my persona (or the SCA for that matter). However, I do love knitting and knitted goods, and considering that summers can go from incredibly hot during the day to chilly at night, I thought a shawl would be a nice addition to my garb. This is made super simple: it doesn't involve any weird angle turns, or fancy patterning. My preferred knitting style generally involves texture over colorwork, so I tend to focus on patterns with interesting stitch patterns vs color changes.
This shawl looks like a moss stitch, adding a new stitch at the end of every other row for half the pattern, then decreasing one stitch at the end of every other row for the second half. A moss stitch is a 4-row pattern that is super easy and makes a beautiful almost leaf-like pattern. However (!), it's not actually a moss stitch- it's a variation on a seed stitch. The complication with doing this as a moss stitch is that once the decreases would start, the pattern would start shifting and look different from the first half (this was discovered the hard way, naturally...). So what actually happened was a seed stitch, that uses the offsetting of the increases and decreases to essentially become a moss stitch.
A close up of a true moss stitch
How to Knit a Moss Stitch:
Row 1: K1, P1 to end
Row 2: K1, P1 to end
Row 3: P1, K1 to end
Row 4: P1, K1 to end
How to Knit this Shawl
Cast on 2 stitches
Row 1: P1, K1
Row 2: K1, make one (knit one to the front and the back)
Row 3: P1, K1 to end
Row 4: K1, P1 to second to last stitch, make one
Continue pattern until you have 145 stitches. Then on every even row, decrease 1 stitch at the end of the row until you have 2 stitches remaining. Bind off, weave in ends, and block.
And that's all she wrote, as far as the pattern itself goes.
I have named this shawl "The Shawl That Never Ends." I've been working on this shawl in one shape or form for about two years. And just when I thought it would be done, I ran out of yarn. The painful irony of stash busting a shawl and then needing to purchase more yarn for said shawl is not lost on me. Of course, the dye lot was different. It's much bluer in natural light than the body of the shawl. To add insult to injury, this ALSO ran out on me before the end so I had to buy yet another skein, whose dye lot was much closer to the original batch. I used maybe 15 rows worth, and now have that skein just sitting around as well for another misguided attempt at stash busting down the road.
And now my shawl is ended.
