Pattern: My Own-ish (see below)
Yarn: SULI FIBRES Easter Bonnet. Wool with mohair, silk and beads.
Needles: 15.75 mm wooden needles

This is not actually a recent project but I decided to block it out yesterday and, given the yarn name, today seemed a goodday to post it. I usually call this my “dishcloth shawl” because the pattern  is actually the first part of a free dishcloth pattern I got when I first started knitting. I made this a little over a year ago and sometimes use it to keep my shoulders warm at work. It’s more of a fishu than a shawl but it’s great for filling in the neckline of a shirt when the air is cold but you don’t want to wear a turtle neck.


Since it is all garter stitch it had a kind of lumpy texture (see above) and I wanted to see how it would look blocked out flat. I gave it a good soak and a rinse and pinned it out on top of a sheet on the carpet. I think it responded very well. The stitches stretched out to make a clear lace pattern with large eyelets making a border down the sides. The texture of the yarn itself still shows very well (perhaps better) but the shawl has a smoother appearance and will lay flat on a surface, or my shoulders, instead of bunching up. It’s still more of a shawlette than a shawl but it grew almost 20 cm (8") in each direction.


The picture at the top is a curl of mohair (I think) that was sticking out of the shawl when I finished blocking. It reminds me of that perfect curl Superman always has in the middle of his forehead.


Materials
Yarn: Any you like.
Needles: Any size to suite your yarn and desired gauge.
Tapestry Needle

Gauge:
There is no set gauge for this pattern. Using the suggest needles for your yarn as a starting point you can experiment to achieve different effects. A tight gauge on smaller needles will produce a dense, solid fabric. A loose gauge on larger needles will produce a lacier shawl.

Terms:
K1fb: Knit into the front and back of a stitch to increase one.
YO: Yarn over. Between two stitches put the yarn around the right needle as though forming a stitch.

Directions:
Cast on 2 stitches.
Row 1: K1fb, K1fb; 4 sts
Row 2: K2, YO, Knit to end of row. 5 sts
Repeat Row 2 to desired size or until you have only enough yarn left to bind off.
Bind off top edge loosely.

Finishing:
Weave in yarn ends. Block your shawl as desired for an even finish. Lacy shawls can be blocked out tightly; denser shawls won't need as much stretching.

Pattern: Easy Mesh Lace Triangle from Fiddlesticks Knitting
Yarn: 1 skein Fiddlesticks Knitting Country Silk Yarn (aprox. 800m/250g)  I’m not sure what the colourway was called - autumn or harvest or something like that.
Needles: 3.75 mm bamboo circular(32”)
Modifications: None
 
I knew I was getting close to the end of this early in February when it reached to about my waist unstretched. I wanted it to be a generous shawl, and I also wanted to use up as much the ball of yarn I was on as possible, so I did a few more pattern repeats before doing the top edge pattern. When I finished knitting the shawl reached to about my hip, after blocking it falls nearly to my knees!

 
The original skein for this shawl was massive and gorgeous.  I got it when we were on vacation in BC almost two years ago - well before my knitting skills were up to the challenge of such a large project - it was too lovely.  I saw the sample in the shop window and bought the pattern and yarn together as a kit.
 
Last October I wound the skein into balls (it made three) and started knitting. The shawl starts as two stitches at the bottom point and grows as you work up to the top edge. This meant that it went really quickly at first and slowed down gradually as my skills increased (very handy). By the time I was nearing the top it took me roughly fifteen minutes to knit across a row.
 
The final bind-off was something different. The pattern uses a “knit 1, knit 2 together” bind off, meaning that every stitch was worked twice, and I had to keep checking to make sure my tension wasn’t too loose or tight (it actually ended up a kind of loose) - it took me an entire hour to bind of the top edge of I-didn’t-bother-to-count-how-many stitches.
 
Blocking was kind of fun.  It was a good thing I didn’t make the shawl any larger or it would not have fit on the bed (my only blocking surface). It took a few tries before I had the edges pined out into a good shape. The top edge was quite loose and I had to stretch the sides a long way to even it out. When I was finished the top edge of the shawl was the entire length of our bed and the bottom tip nearly reached the opposite side.
 
A few statistics:
Pre-blocking measurements: 60” across the top, 41” along the side and 34” from bottom tip to centre top.
Post-blocking measurements: 75” across the top, 59” along the side and 44” from bottom tip to centre top.
 
A few comparison shots:
 
                Pre-Block                                                Post-Block


Texture


Stitch pattern