Be Brave with Color Choices to Knit This Shawl

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]

Sometimes when I’m scrolling through Ravelry a pattern will catch my eye as much because of the name as the look of the design (which is a little hard to see in those little thumbnails sometimes, anyway).

So it was with the Stellify shawl by Paola Albergamo. Stellify means to turn into a star, and the name and the story behind the shawl come from the story of Ariadne. The better known part of her story is that she helped Theseus escape from the Minotaur, but he then abandoned her. What comes after in many stories is that Dionysus found her, fell in love with her and later married her.

When he threw her jeweled crown into the sky, the Corona Borealis constellation was formed.

What does all this have to do with shawl knitting?

The shawl itself looks like it has a scattering of stars on it, as if it, too, has been stellified. The shawl begins with an I-cord tap and is shaped into a triangular shawl with both lateral and central increases. I-cord edging is incorporated into the sides, and the colorwork is done with mosaic knitting, which means this shawl is easier than it looks.

Mosaic knitting has you working with just one color per row, slipping stitches that appear in the other color to make the colorwork visible. Even better for people new to this kind of colorwork, the pattern includes written and charted instructions throughout so it should be easy to follow along.

The pattern comes in two sizes (the larger one is shown here) and calls for two colors of fingering weight yarn. It looks great in black and yellow, but don’t miss the other projects on Ravelry to see other fun and beautiful color options.

You can find the pattern in English and Italian on Ravelry.

[Photo: Paola Albergamo]

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