Basic Triangle Shawl Knitting Pattern

A basic triangle shawl is a great project to have in your arsenal. If you’ve never done shaping before, you’ll get a lot of practice with increases (in this case, yarn overs). And once you understand how knitting a triangle works, it’s a basic shape and project that you can make over and over again in different ways.

This basic triangle shawl pattern from Mirella Moments is worked from the bottom up in DK or light worsted yarn. It has garter stitch borders and the body is worked in stockinette. Though it’s knit flat, you’ll want a circular knitting needle for ease of holding all those stitches.

Because it’s a blank canvas, there are a lot of potential options for customization, such as:

use heavier or lighter-weight yarn
add stripes
make the borders a different stitch pattern like moss or seed stitch
use a different increase method
work the body in a different stitch pattern or add garter ridges

In addition to using different weights of yarn you could also make different sizes of shawls depending on how much of a particular yarn you have on hand. Shawls like this are great for using those random balls of yarn you aren’t sure what to do with, or leftovers from other projects.

They’re a little more fun to knit than scarves but you can still find places to donate them to charity, or they make great gifts.

You can get this free pattern from Mirella Moments.

And of course there are lots of variations on the basic triangle that make great, easy shawl knitting projects as well, like an asymmetrical triangle (this one is from Yarnspirations). And speaking of using scraps for your shawl, I recently shared a scrappy shawl pattern designed to do just that, if you want more guidance than just “use all your scraps on this project.”

[Photo: Mirella Moments]

For the past few years I’ve taken part in a Christmas in July blog hop that encourages people to get a jump on their making for holiday gifts.

I love to use yarn I already have for these projects in the hope that people will consider what they already have that they can use to make projects for themselves or to give as gifts.

This year it was a couple of knit baskets made using partial balls of yarn left in my stash from other projects.

They use the same basic pattern but the first one is made with two colors of bulky yarn, and the second used two strands of worsted weight yarn held together, which made the gauge about the same, but I cast on fewer stitches to make a smaller version.

The bottom of the basket is square, though you can make them rectangular if you’d rather. Then I just knit up the sides in rounds until I was about to run out of yarn. This gave both baskets rather short sides — maybe more like a tray than a basket — but you can keep knitting as long as you like to make the sides of your basket as tall as you want.

They’re worked in seed stitch, which keeps the edges from curling and adds a nice texture to the baskets.

Of course this also allows you to use even more odd balls from your stash. I’d love to make a big one someday combining lots of different yarn. I mean, I’d probably use it to store more yarn, but that’s a fine thing to do.

As it is, these little trays are great for sitting on your desk or bedside table to hold little things that always seem to appear there. I like to use one to hold the supplies for whatever project I’m working on, things like little scissors, my tape measure, a crochet hook, etc.

And they would make good gifts on their own or as a container to hold some other goodies if you like.

You can find the free pattern for these stash busting baskets over at Our Daily Craft.

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