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Be Brave with Color Choices to Knit This Shawl

April 11, 2024 by Sarah White

Helen Kennedy says her shawl pattern, Always Be Brave, came about because people shopping at a local yarn fair were drawn to heavily multicolored yarns but didn’t know what to do with them.

She designed the shawl to use a wild multicolor yarn along with a high contrast solid color yarn, using a slip stitch pattern and reversing the colors midway through to make a different effect in the fabric.

The original version of Always Be Brave was made with sport weight yarn and was published in Knitty for Deep Fall 2019.

Helen has reworked the pattern and released a new version using fingering weight/sock yarn and released it as its own pattern on Ravelry.

Both projects are large asymmetrical triangles and they are worked sideways from a tip to the long edge. It is mostly worked in stockinette stitch with slip stitch colorwork adding texture and contrast. 

Helen used single ply sock yarn to make her version; you’ll need about 420 yards/384 meters of each color. The shawl comes out to about 72 inches in wingspan (that’s 180 cm) and 20 inches/50 cm deep at the widest point.

This project is a great one to try out slip stitch or mosaic knitting patterns if you haven’t tried them before. There is a chart involved but it isn’t difficult to follow, and once you have a hang of the slip stitch pattern it’s pretty easy to do.

You can find the updated pattern on Ravelry.

If you’re looking for more mosaic knitting patterns to try, check out my mosaic knit cowl, which is another one that uses a multicolored yarn along with a solid. I’ve also gathered a collection of mosaic colorwork knitting patterns you can try. It’s a really fun technique that makes colorwork that looks a lot more involved than it is.

[Photo: Helen Kennedy]

Next Pattern:

  • Knit a Three Color Zigzag Shawl
  • Book Review: Knit Color Block Blankets
  • Knit a Single Color Argyle-Style Vest
«
»

Have you read?

Embellish Your Knit Dishcloth with Flowers

One great thing to knit when the weather is warm (or honestly any other time) is dishcloths and washcloths. They are fun and easy projects and a great way to play with new skills. Pretty washcloths make cleaning a tiny bit more fun, and they’re great to have on hand as a quick addition to a store-bought gift. 

The Daisy Delight Dishcloth from Yarnspirations is a fun one for using leftover bits of green in your cotton yarn stash. What looks like the bottom in the picture is actually the left side as you knit it, and each little color section is worked with its own ball of yarn, intarsia style. 

That’s a little fiddly for a washcloth, but the effect is cute, and it’s a simple way to learn the basics of intarsia knitting (as well as reading a chart) if you don’t already have those skills. 

One the knitting is done, you add the flowers with a bit of lazy daisy embroidery, which is really easy to do even if you’re not that into embroidery. You could also potentially add flowers in duplicate stitch if you’d rather. 

This may be the most work you’ve put into a dishcloth, but isn’t it adorable? It would be fun to use as a hand towel through the spring and summer, and if you already have some leftover green yarn from other projects it should be pretty easy to do. 

You could also take this same concept and make it different colors. All dark green stems with stars on top might be reminiscent of Christmas trees, or brown with daisy stitch on top in different colors could be trees in the fall. 

However you stitch it, this looks like a fun little project for knitters who are comfortable with intarsia and reading charts or who are ready to try those skills. 

You can grab the free pattern from Yarnspirations. 

[Photo: Yarnspirations]

Book Review – Dishcloths for Special Days [Knitting]

Book Review – Holiday Knit Dishcloths

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